I recently gained some interesting insight from a friend who works for Washington Mutual bank. He gets flown around to various bank locations to update their computer hardware for Y2K-compatibility. Washington Mutual has a contract with IBM requiring them to only use IBM hardare, so this guy is actually employed by IBM. He says IBM has set a deadline for Nov. 31 to have updated all its Washington Mutual systems. He believes they will meet the deadline, but when I asked him about testing, he said he didn't know anything about it. Then he caught my attention by telling me IBM planned to have most of its "update" staffers (including himself) on call through the entire month of January, just in case any problems arise. I suppose I could interpret that as good news...

-- Mike (alert@watcher.com), November 08, 1999

Answers

Before W-M took over Home Savings of America I had no trouble accessing account info over the phone. Now all I get is, "We can't give you that information" or, "You can't make a tranfer from account 'x' to account 'y'. When I go into the bank, the answer is "Sure, you can do that, I don't know why they told you that at the phone banking center, its all OK now." WRONG!!

Now, I can understand this happening during the transition period, but it's been an ongoing problem. It appears that two different software packages that W-M used to convert Home accounts are not talking correctly to one another.

Anyone else having problems with W-M ???? Any suggestions for a new bank ??

Cheers -pho

-- pho (owennos@bigfoot.com), November 08, 1999.

November 31, 1999 you say? Well theres no such date.

-- meme (me@me.me), November 08, 1999.

Minor detail, but there is no Nov. 31...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), November 08, 1999.