By Bob Sullivan
Bank of America’s website troubles seemed to finally be fixed Tuesday evening, after a fifth straight day of frustration for consumers. The timing of the trouble is hard to ignore, as it began almost immediately after Bank of America announced it was adding a $5 monthly fee for account holders who make purchases with their debit card.
"Some customers who tried logging in on Tuesday received a message saying, “We’re sorry our site is running slowly. As a result you may experience delays.”
The bank has steadfastly denied that the outages are the result of any foul play, as it did in March when widespread outages were reported. Bank of America spokeswoman Tara Burke reiterated those denials on Tuesday.
"This was not a result of hacking and debit card usage fee was not a cause of site slowness," she said, adding that engineers believed they'd fixed the problem by Tuesday afternoon.
No hacking group has attempted to take credit for the outages, lending credence to the company’s claim. Data obtained by msnbc.com on what times of day the outages have occurred also seems to hint at an IT problem, rather than a hacking incident.
There are plenty of other potential explanations. Account holders in the Pacific Northwest are currently being told that an upgrade planned for Oct. 17 will offer them “expanded capabilities like the ability to set up Alerts to monitor account activity, go green with paperless statements, pay bills with Mobile Banking, and more.” It’s possible the website struggles are related to this upgrade; Burke wouldn't comment on that.
Customers who face overdraft fees or other problems because of the outage should contact a branch to request refunds.
"We will work with each customer on an individual basis in regards to fees,” spokeswoman Tara Burke said.
Ben Rushlo, director of performance management at Keynote Systems Inc., which monitors the performance of company websites, said the Bank of America outage has been highly unusual.
"We've really never seen anything like this before, a prominent Web site having this kind of trouble for this long," he said. He confirmed that the bank's website returned to normal after 3:45 p.m. ET.
Data provided to msnbc.com by SmartBear Software, produced through its AlertSite Internet monitoring service, tell the story of frustration Bank of America customers have experienced in recent days. The outages have at times been severe, and were worst at midday Friday, when 90 percent of website requests failed, according to SmartBear. The heaviest outages have occurred during business hours, with none on Sunday, hinting that software or hardware upgrades being conducted by employees might be causing the trouble.
Source:- http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com
Bank of America’s website troubles seemed to finally be fixed Tuesday evening, after a fifth straight day of frustration for consumers. The timing of the trouble is hard to ignore, as it began almost immediately after Bank of America announced it was adding a $5 monthly fee for account holders who make purchases with their debit card.
"Some customers who tried logging in on Tuesday received a message saying, “We’re sorry our site is running slowly. As a result you may experience delays.”
The bank has steadfastly denied that the outages are the result of any foul play, as it did in March when widespread outages were reported. Bank of America spokeswoman Tara Burke reiterated those denials on Tuesday.
"This was not a result of hacking and debit card usage fee was not a cause of site slowness," she said, adding that engineers believed they'd fixed the problem by Tuesday afternoon.
No hacking group has attempted to take credit for the outages, lending credence to the company’s claim. Data obtained by msnbc.com on what times of day the outages have occurred also seems to hint at an IT problem, rather than a hacking incident.
There are plenty of other potential explanations. Account holders in the Pacific Northwest are currently being told that an upgrade planned for Oct. 17 will offer them “expanded capabilities like the ability to set up Alerts to monitor account activity, go green with paperless statements, pay bills with Mobile Banking, and more.” It’s possible the website struggles are related to this upgrade; Burke wouldn't comment on that.
Customers who face overdraft fees or other problems because of the outage should contact a branch to request refunds.
"We will work with each customer on an individual basis in regards to fees,” spokeswoman Tara Burke said.
Ben Rushlo, director of performance management at Keynote Systems Inc., which monitors the performance of company websites, said the Bank of America outage has been highly unusual.
"We've really never seen anything like this before, a prominent Web site having this kind of trouble for this long," he said. He confirmed that the bank's website returned to normal after 3:45 p.m. ET.
Data provided to msnbc.com by SmartBear Software, produced through its AlertSite Internet monitoring service, tell the story of frustration Bank of America customers have experienced in recent days. The outages have at times been severe, and were worst at midday Friday, when 90 percent of website requests failed, according to SmartBear. The heaviest outages have occurred during business hours, with none on Sunday, hinting that software or hardware upgrades being conducted by employees might be causing the trouble.
Source:- http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com
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