http://www.businesstoday.com/topstories/dep06081999.htm

Glitch Irks New BankBoston System by Joe Bartolotta

Tuesday, June 8, 1999

BankBoston is still trying to work out a few kinks in a new direct deposit processing system after about 1,500 customers' money failed to arrive before Memorial Day weekend.

The accounts were credited by that Saturday afternoon, May 29, and customers didn't report any major inconveniences, said Kristen Habermann, a bank spokeswoman.

``Everything's been running fine since then,'' she said.

That's not much comfort to Neil Harmon, managing partner of Harmon Technologies in Westford. Harmon has just 10 employees, but three didn't receive their deposits that Friday.

``They were somewhat concerned,'' he said. ``The money wasn't there and some of them were planning to go away for the weekend.''

Harmon went with his employees to the bank, which promptly credited the account when the employees showed their check stubs, he said.

The bank is nearing the end of a four-year conversion to a new transfer system, Habermann said. That weekend, the bank converted its federal government transfers - such as social security checks - to the new system.

The glitch occurred due to ``data overload'' on the new system, Habermann said. The transfer load is always heaviest at month's end, thanks in part to government deposits.

The holiday weekend increased the load further, because some deposits that would have been credited on the Monday holiday were instead credited the Friday before, she said.

Federal deposits have been returned to the old transfer system until the new one is equipped to handle the load, she said.

The bank averages 500,000 transfers a day, Habermann said, and there had been no problems until Memorial Day weekend.

-- lucy2k (fben4077@yahoo.com), June 08, 1999

Answers

"That's not much comfort to Neil Harmon, managing partner of Harmon Technologies in Westford. Harmon has just 10 employees, but three didn't receive their deposits that Friday.

`They were somewhat concerned,'' he said. `The money wasn't there and some of them were planning to go away for the weekend.''

I hope this means that all three employees are living so close to the edge that they couldn't go away for the weekend without that money? Ifthat's the case, this is great news!

It means that all three are spending all of their money. It's fine people like this who are keep the economy churning - spending, racking up debt and depleting their savings (the savings rate was negative again for another month). Please don't stop. We are all counting on you.

And if the economy turns sour (which couldn't possibly happen in our lifetime...right?), what would happen to these people? Well... that's just to hard to think about, so let's not talk about it. We'll worry about that later. We can 'fix-on-failure.'

-- PNG (png@gol.com), June 08, 1999.