FNB foul-up fuels fury

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Published Oct 9, 2012

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Durban - A national IT upgrade gone awry saw FNB customers stranded at petrol stations and stuck at check-out tills at the weekend, as ATMs and card-machines were left offline.

The technical malfunction left shoppers unable to pay for groceries, fuel and other items with their bank cards on Sunday. Those who tried to draw cash were greeted with an error message with their card being returned from ATMs.

Social media’s frequently used platform for venting frustration, Twitter, was inundated with #FNB prefixing and suffixing a barrage of scathing tweets on Sunday.

“#FNB cannot begin to understand [the] inconvenience [it] caused clients today,” said Roger February (@rfeb). Odwa Mazwi (@Odz_Mazwi) tweeted, “Debit card declined several times after I got petrol far from home or anyone I know…#FNB!!!!”

Those not directly affected also vented.

“A customer with 2 full trolleys staging a sit in @pnp Trade Route #FNB card not swiping,” said Shirley Ngamlana (@Sis_bhabha).

“RbJacobs”, the FNB social media “guy”, tweeted an apology just after 1pm on Monday in an attempt to quell the anger.

“Sincere apologies for inconvenience. Our technicians are trying to get to the bottom of this.”

FNB yesterday confirmed the incident, with spokesman Raj Makanjee

saying the upgrade impacted accounts for about 20 minutes on Sunday.

Analysis of the timeline of complaints, however, showed initial trending tweets first started just after 11am up until 3.30pm. - The Mercury

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