Wednesday 4 December 2013

Caution: Your card has been declined

It was on the face of it a fairly normal Monday although the press commentators had dubbed the day Cyber Monday, the day internet retail giants such as Amazon expect to get the highest amount of Christmas preorders through.
What transpired was anything but, leaving  a good many people with some intriguing questions remaining unanswered.
At approximately 18:00 GMT the credit cards of many people with accounts to the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Group became unusable both at the ATMs and also for purchases at stores both online and instore. Fixing it took several hours going well into the night with reports the following day saying it was a computer system glitch with profuse apologies offered and talk of not leaving anyone out of pocket.
Consider the following situations people experienced:
People out for social gatherings in a restaurant unable to play their bills.
People unable to pay for groceries in their shopping baskets as their cards were declined
Car owners having bought Gasoline unable to leave as they couldn't pay
Christmas shopping expeditions brought to a holt. 
Customers finding electronic  transactions  failed and in some circumstances unexplained transactions appearing to have occurred.
For some of these making good on losses maybe adequate but consider such things as  embarrassment caused in store by being unable to pay. Should someone like that perhaps get an additional amount for embarrassment at having to have goods returned in public?
What of say you went to order a item on special offer about to pay for it and you were declined. Should losing that offer be compensated?
Finally why was it the banking industry was allowed to spend little on maintaining and upgrading decade old systems patched up after takers and mergers?

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