I can understand, though I was never affected and like a lot of people those things pass by.
I’m sure there are heaps of things to be concerned about in the pasts of the likes of Barclays or HSBC or Lloyds given their ages!
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Three and a half years ago.
No one ever mentions the RBS/NatWest/Ulster meltdown nine years ago. Or HSBC six years ago.
These things get forgotten about.
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RBS and NatWest customers lost access to their accounts for a week. Ulster bank accounts were locked out for a nearly a month.
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You literally had to wait for the equiv of a ‘specialist’ the next day, just saying.
It sounds like first line support couldnt resolve the issue, or at least thats how it reads.
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The Register has a good write-up of what happened at RBS, NatWest and Ulster.
It was a bit different to the TSB issues as it was specifically an issue with the batch processing of transactions. Once the software was processing transactions correctly again, all that was needed was to simply re-run the batches so accounts would be accurate. Nothing fundamentally “broke” in the same way as it did at TSB.
Even now, TSB still has oddities caused by the migration which have never been fixed. Whenever I open a new account at TSB, including logged in to internet banking, it creates a new duplicate customer profile for me because my old one (a legacy from before the migration) must be corrupt in some way. This, without fail, requires a call to fix (and they won’t engage with the issue through any other channel). The person on the phone fills in an internal form to get the profiles merged, while I read out information for them. They tell me normally the system auto-detects this and resolves it within 8-10 days. It never does.
Additionally, things like renaming a credit card account are still broken on their online banking. I don’t like how the credit card is, by default, called a “MasterCard” when the branding is now “Mastercard”, but I can’t change it. It throws an error.
Sometimes documents for accounts don’t show up in the online banking Inbox. Reliability is still not there. Very occasionally, you get a weird message that the app is down when you try to login (it seems to be a load-balancing issue).
Immediately after the migration happened, I couldn’t log in for about 3 weeks. I got an error message in Spanish every time I did so.
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Is it broken or turned off? Currently NatWest are not allowing you to change the name of accounts due to an increase in scams where people have managed to log in and change names to scam customers.
I don’t think, broadly, your issues are a general issue for TSB customers, and seems fairly specific to you. I’m absolutely open to being corrected but I know a fair number of folk with TSB and none have ever said a bad word.
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It’s not been turned off like NatWest as this happened immediately after the migration. Ever since then, my credit card has been called “Platinum (MasterCard”. Before it was called “Platinum MasterCard”, which was OK. I would like it to read “Platinum Mastercard”.
It’s just shoddy and I’m sure it’s not unique to me. People who have joined TSB “fresh”, on the Sabadell Sabis IT system, may not have the same issues as most of it seemed to be caused by errors in the migration of Lloyds-platform profiles.
I also forgot to mention that during the migration something was messed-up with the app so even the “new” app, supposedly already on the new platform, “forgot” the saved login details of users and had to be re-registered to a device. I then found it wouldn’t allow Touch ID to be turned on for a least a couple of weeks, when an update seemed to re-enable it as an option.
But the issues are widespread and were widespread at the time.
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I don’t think the HSBC issues were anywhere near the scale of RBS’s, let alone the debacle that was the TSB migration.
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TL;DR it wasn’t just me.
A refresher:
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I think it was traced back to another software issue, but it only affected online banking and not everything else?
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From memory, there were two separate short term issues over a few months.
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HSBC had an issue with a BACS file which led to some payments being slightly delayed - unfortunately, this was just before the August bank holiday so affected more people than it would have otherwise.
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Online banking had a issue but the app still worked
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Good point.
It’s off topic, but this is where asynchronous messaging should, at least in theory, be better than typical branch interactions.
You can clearly only go into the branch when it is open, but sending a message can be made possible at any time. OK, maybe the relevant people won’t be looking into it straight away, but at least you have started the process of getting them to look into it and they can get back to you when they have - without you having to wait around for the reply.
You don’t usually have to wait until a set time to ask the question, which is where Monzo falls down.
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You’ve been very unlucky with TSB and I’ve not experienced the same problems you’ve had I didn’t end up with a duplicate profile when I opened a new (third) current account last year; it just appeared in my account list straightaway.
I am a pre Sabadell takeover customer.
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I’m not sure if I’ve been very unlucky, or you’ve been very lucky, but it’s probably a little of both!
There is no doubt about it, though, that a huge number of customers have had issues related to the IT migration. The significance of this can’t be underestimated.
I’ve stayed with them first for the interest rate and more lately for the cashback, and also because my credit card (taken out when they paid 1% cashback on credit card spending) has a high limit. I don’t use them as my main account and I doubt I ever would.
I also believe that, medium to long term, it’s likely that TSB will be absorbed into Virgin Money. Both have a Scottish HQ, TSB’s current CEO Debbie Crosbie joined from Clydesdale (Virgin, effectively) and Sabadell have been relatively transparent about the fact that they would like a sale. Plus, I don’t believe TSB is that viable as a bank in it’s own right. It’s main focus is/was branch banking, and to Crosbie’s credit it is now moving away from that and into more IT-led efforts - but catching up will still take time. There is little in the way of USP and TSB’s customer base is too small to make a significant profit from.
Once the Clydesdale/Yorkshire integration work is over at Virgin Money (and it almost is already) they will be ready to go shopping again and TSB will be in their sights!
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Apparently when I asked the names of the account are whats used as NatWest’s Confirmation of Payee!? Thus why they CANNOT be changed!
Nah that’s not true. I have changed most of mine previously and there still is the button to change but I can’t change my savings account.
Confirmation of payee can’t be verified through account names surely? Otherwise everyone will be “Current account” or something to that effect.
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The person who said this was either misinformed, didn’t understand how the system works, or didn’t understand the question.
The account name was only for the account holder’s own use and has nothing to do with Confirmation of Payee.
My accounts which do have a nickname set report my name correctly via CoP but are set to something totally different on my Online Banking.
This change was specifically to avoid “safe account” fraud during COVID when many people (including the old and vulnerable) were using online banking for the first time. Nothing more than that.
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No idea but this was the reason they gave for refusing to change my account name from mine to the products name.
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I’m a new TSB customer and not had an issue changing the name on my account through the app, this is just on my current account though, don’t have a credit card with them.
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RBS have enabled instant card notifications now
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