Hundreds of customers have been unable to access Natwest online banking services, with a suspected outage causing havoc for those trying to access services.
An outpouring of anguish on social media heralded the service outage, with customers across the UK experiencing difficulties from around 10:00am.
The outage tracking website, DownDetector, has been monitoring the problem and the impact it has had so far. It has been estimated that around 70 per cent of Natwest online banking customers have been affected so far.
Natwest is not alone in having experienced technical difficulties that cause outages for masses of customers, with Lloyds and Halifax also recently having faced the wrath of customers due to a failure of online banking services.
In the case of the recent Lloyds and Halifax outage similar social media outrage was expressed, with a Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson reaching out to offer apology and reassurance to customers.
Today, Natwest has reacted similarly, with the Twitter ‘help’ account telling one disgruntled customer that “we’re aware of some issues with our online banking service and are working hard to fix this. Apologies and thank you for your patience.”
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WhatsApp also sparked outcry recently when it too was hit by a brief outage of service. Primarily impacting customers in the UK and Europe, the outage was also reported in other parts of the world. On this occasion, DownDetector stated that it appeared as though 60 per cent of users were experiencing problems.
With the world now reliant upon seamless connectivity and access to services, down time is extremely costly, even if the problem persists for only a short period of time. A prime example of a costly IT outage was the British Airways service failure, in which thousands of flights were cancelled, with around 75,000 people directly affected.
