07 Apr 2018

ABSA downtime ruins clients' weekend plans

Cape Town - ABSA bank's services were offline for a few hours on Saturday, preventing clients from making payments or drawing money.

Clients were upset that they were not warned in advance of the downtime, which happened from 12:52, according to website DownDetector.

DownDetector tracks reports of apps and services not working.

According to DownDetector services impacted include mobile banking, online banking and the website.

ABSA responded on Twitter by 14:00, indicating that it was experiencing "technical difficulties" and that it had teams working to resolve the problem.

Shortly after the bank tweeted that services were working as normal.

But a user, @TS11110 tweeted around 17:00 that the banking app was still not working.

Still can't use Internet banking/ banking app
— TS (@TS11110) April 7, 2018

More users expressed their frustrations on Twitter, as the downtime had affected their weekend plans.

Some clients complained that they could not buy food.

Hi @Absa, can you at least communicate with us that you’re having systematic issues today? I’m actually hungry now I can’t buy food because you guys suck ??
— Watermelaniniquaa (@Zabe_SM) April 7, 2018

Hey #absa @Absa Thanks for crippling my Saturday. Can’t leave where I am because I can’t pay. Kids getting annoyed but that’s fun hey. Not even a heads up or sorry! Useless
— PaulyK (@paulkroberts) April 7, 2018

@Absa what is going on with Absa? All my cards are being declined. Can't access Absa app or Absa Internet Banking to do EFT's??
— Yolande Rosslee (@RossleeYolande) April 7, 2018
A user, @wordnerd212 complained that she was stranded at a petrol station.
Also, @absa, I have a lot of time to kill because I can’t leave this petrol station until the problem is fixed so I have a lot of time to think about this. Perhaps you should actually let clients know that your entire system is down, so the same doesn’t happen to other people?
— Bianca Capazorio (@wordnerd212) April 7, 2018
The entire @Absa network is down. Which would be fine I guess, if I hadn’t just put petrol in my car that I can’t pay for and the call centre agents weren’t telling people it will take an hour to fix.
— Bianca Capazorio (@wordnerd212) April 7, 2018
Just stony silence. A friend had to come pay for me because I nearly an hour late for something now.
— Bianca Capazorio (@wordnerd212) April 7, 2018

Another user @asijoli2018 was also stranded at a petrol station and had to rely on someone else to pay so that he could leave.

So my @Absa storyI woke up and got dressed to go shopping. I started off by filling up with petrol only to have my card declined. I then had to wait for a friend's friend to come and rescue me at the petrol station.
— Sharapova Apologist (@asijoli2018) April 7, 2018

ABSA has not yet responded to Fin24's queries about the extent of the outage and which services were affected.

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