By Marvin Meintjies
Governments and businesses spent millions on the Y2K bug - making sure their computers could read the year 2000 - never dreaming that, as First National Bank found out, some computers would not be able to read 2001.
FNB credit-card holders will be in for some nasty surprises when they open their bank statements at the end of the month.
Some, like premium-card holder James Durieux, will be charged interest dating back to 1901.
Durieux checked his account details on the Internet on January 3 to find a debit of R4 900 for interest on his credit card, dating back a century.
Slightly put-out by this, Durieux contacted FNB, who
advised him that they had in fact experienced problems with their credit-card computer system.
Further probing by Durieux led an official to confess that their computers had a problem reading the date January 1 2001, and reverted to January 1 1901.
Said Durieux: "Nobody likes to find an erroneous debit of R4 900 on their credit card, but it's especially unnerving when it dates back to 1901.
"It's quite ironic that everybody was so concerned about 2000, and nothing happened."
Vicky Johnson, of FNB consumer card division, told The Star that the problem was picked up by their computer
experts, and rectified.
"However, credit-card holders will be receiving statements that reflect erroneous debits. We are sending out letters to our customers to tell them to
ignore these statements, and advising them that correct statements will be sent."
About 16 000 transactions were affected by the glitch before FNB's systems experts picked up the problem and rectified it on January 4.
"When they'd gone through the Y2K thing they probably did not check to see if the computers could read 2001."
South African Banking Council spokesperson Claire Gebhardt-Mann said the council had not had reports of
similar problems from other banks.