FNB`s eBucks online banking site was still offline early this morning, despite assurances that urgent repairs at the weekend would solve the site`s problems. By mid-morning, the site appeared to be available again, but services were still either shaky or extremely slow.
The site "experienced sporadic periods of downtime" since 21 September, much to the frustration of eBucks clients. Irate eBucks clients contacted ITWeb to complain that the problems were causing severe inconvenience and increased costs.
FNB said on Friday that its technical team was doing everything possible to sort out the problems, and gave the assurance that the site would finally be fully functional by this morning.
In a statement issued on Friday, the bank said: "In order to restore full service to our customers as soon as possible, we must close the site for 48 hours starting Friday night at 7pm to give the technical team time to fix the problem."
Angus Brown, CEO of eBucks.com, says errors were picked up on Sunday, 21 September during routine monthly Web site maintenance activity. The errors caused a week of sporadic downtime. Brown apologised for the inconvenience, saying: "Our technical experts together with our US-based technology provider have isolated the problem and are working around the clock to restore normal service levels.
"The technical team was successful in getting the site functional again for Thursday, 25 September and Friday, 26 September," says Brown. "Despite the fact that the site was slower than usual, over 62 000 logons and 40 982 financial transactions were processed." He points out that Web site uptime over the last six months had been maintained at 99%.
Brown says the bank`s Internet Banking call centre had been bolstered by 17 agents during the week, to cope with the flood of queries. "Consultants took 3 000 calls and were successful in supporting customers to process transactions," he says.
Brown urges FNB and RMB Private Banking customers to use alternative channels such as ATMs and branches.
He says eBucks.com is putting procedures in place to ensure this problem does not recur in the future.
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