Courtesy of our Irish colleagues over on Tuppenceworth.ie comes yet another tale of poor quality information in financial services. Although this time it is at the lower end of the scale, at least on a per customer basis. However, the impacts on a customer are still irksome and problematic. And the solution the bank has put in place is a classic example of why inspecting defects out of a process is never an exact or value adding science.

It seems that Bank of Ireland has recently introduced some new software. Unfortunately, a bug in the software has resulted in certain transactions (deductions) being posted multiple times to accounts, resulting in cash-strapped Irish people being more strapped for cash than they’d expected.

Simon McGarr, (one of the authors over at Tuppenceworth) sums up the story and the reason why this is an IQTrainwreck:

I spotted a double charge on my account, for a pretty significant sum of money (is there any other kind?).

When I rang up to query it, I was told Bank of Ireland have changed their computer systems recently (Two weeks or so).

As a result, some transactions are being applied to accounts twice if they were processed through Laser [a debit card system in Ireland — ed.], or if they were a Pass machine [what the Irish call ATMs –ed.] withdrawal.

They say that if you spot the double charge, and ring them up to complain, they’ll send an email to their programmers to reverse the second charge.

I suggested to the polite customer services person that the bank might want to warn their clients to be alert for these double charges, as they could suffer additional charges (from appearing to breach their overdraft limits, for example) unless they spotted the bank’s mistake.

(Emphasis is added by this author)

Simon goes on to add (in a comment) that he has been without the benefit of his hard earned cash for 10 days (and counting).

So,

• the bank has known for 2 weeks that there is a problem with software it installed.
• It has failed to notify customers, who will in some cases at least exceed their overdraft limits and incur further charges (ranging from €3.50 upwards per transaction).
• The bank is relying on the customers to spot the error and contact them, at which time they’ll do some scrap and rework on the customer’s accounts to reverse their error.
• A customer has been out of pocket for 10 days, and the bank is still holding on to his money in error.

Simon’s post doesn’t answer the question as to whether the bank will refund any charges levied as a result of customer’s accounts going over overdraft limits (potentially costly for the bank). I do hope that someone from Bank of Ireland reads this post and sheds some light on that part for Simon  (heck.. if anyone in Financial services can offer an insight into the standard practice here we’d be grateful)

Simon’s post also doesn’t answer this question:

• Has the entire transaction been duplicated? (i.e. might the bank have sent money to a merchant on the double as well?).

Where I, in these recessionary times, to be a small business person or retailer who suddenly found additional cashflow apparently evaporating because a bank had deployed faulty software I’d be rightly peeved.

Again, we invite comments from Bank of Ireland on this.

So… for the actual impact on the financial affairs of people, the sloppy, ineffective and inefficient approach to remedying the issue, the obvious lack of focus on the customer, and the potential impact on the cash flow of businesses, this counts as a classic IQ Trainwreck.

The only advice we can offer Simon at this stage is to move to Australia or New Zealand where his overdraft limit will be set sufficiently high that he need not worry about bank charges. Criminal ones maybe.