BOFA'S ERROR FELT STATEWIDE : OVER MILLION BANK OF AMERICA TRANSACTIONS GO UNREGISTERED.Byline: Cathleen Ferraro Scripps-McClatchy Western Service A mistake on the part of a computer operator at Bank of America
Bank of America (NYSE: BAC TYO: 8648 ) is the largest commercial bank in the United States in terms of deposits, and the largest company of its kind in the world. caused more than 1 million customer transactions to go unregistered Monday and Tuesday, bouncing countless checks across California. The high-tech bungle occurred when an employee at the San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden bank's central processing center in Concord Concord, cities, United States Concord (kŏng`kərd, kŏn`kôrd'). 1 city (1990 pop. 111,348), Contra Costa co., W central Calif.; settled c.1852, inc. 1906. failed to do a necessary computer command. A company official said that then triggered problems at other computer facilities in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. and San Francisco. Statewide, 800,000 deposits and 400,000 withdrawals scheduled to be posted on the first of the month were missed. The mishap (language) MISHAP - An early system on the IBM 1130. [Listed in CACM 2(5):16, May 1959]. affected only automatic deposits and withdrawals, essentially botching accounts for customers who never set foot in the bank. ``All of this happened without people's direct interaction,'' said spokesman John Stafford John Stafford may refer to:
``We're awful sorry this happened,'' said Bob Wynne, a spokesman who oversees the bank's technology group. ``We know this is unsettling un·set·tle v. un·set·tled, un·set·tling, un·set·tles v.tr. 1. To displace from a settled condition; disrupt. 2. To make uneasy; disturb. v.intr. for people. . . . We're adding steps to our procedures so this doesn't happen again.'' BofA has promised to ``cover all the costs associated with this error,'' including waiving penalties for balances that fell below bank minimum requirements and absorbing charges imposed by retailers for bad checks, Stafford said. One Sacramento BofA customer spent a couple of hours at a local branch trying to find out what went wrong with his account. ``I had a deposit, and they didn't have it registered,'' said the man, who asked not to be identified. ``There were a lot of angry customers in there.'' Apparently, bank employees told the customer they had been flooded with calls asking about the blunder. Automatic withdrawals to pay bills, automatic deposit of payroll checks, Social Security and other government issued checks, such as disability payments, went unregistered. All told, 75 percent of BofA transactions - or 1.2 million - were affected. Fewer people may have experienced problems, however, because in some instances there were multiple transactions on single accounts. The good news was that names, account numbers, deposit and withdrawal amounts weren't lost forever. The bank was able to square customer accounts as early as Tuesday morning if customers walked into a bank branch or phoned in a complaint. Later that afternoon all automated teller machines automated teller machine (ATM), device used by bank customers to process account transactions. Typically, a user inserts into the ATM a special plastic card that is encoded with information on a magnetic strip. showed accurate balances, bank officials said. That seemed to be the case at one Sacramento BofA early Tuesday evening. Several customers standing outside the automated teller machines said they hadn't noticed any difference in their accounts. Most weren't even aware of the huge mistake. MEMO: Cathleen Ferraro writes for the Sacramento Bee. |
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