http://www.smh.com.au:80/news/9911/09/text/pageone14.html

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ANZ customers caught in crash

Date: 09/11/99

ANZ Banking Group's 3 million customers were left with limited banking services yesterday after its mainframe computer in Melbourne failed for the second day in a row.

The computer malfunction affected all of ANZ's ATMs and EFTPOS outlets around the country, as well as its Internet and phone banking services.Customers were unable to get account balances or withdraw more than $200 unless they visited a branch.

The computer glitch is an embarrassing hiccup for the bank, which has just spent $183 million upgrading its systems and supposedly making them ready for any problems associated with the new year.

A spokewoman for ANZ said the failure had nothing to do with the Y2K problem and should be fixed by today.

She said the bank, which last week announced a record $1.48 billion profit, would waive the usual $2.50 withdrawal fee for customers who were forced to make a withdrawal in a branch.

''We've identified the problem and we're in the process of fixing it,'' the spokesperson said.

'Part of the mainframe was corrupted and it wasn't accepting certain transactions. We will be updating our system to account for the transactions made yesterday, Sunday, and today [Monday]. So for customers this means everything should be back to normal tomorrow morning.

''They should be able to access their account balances, their transaction history details and the ATM EFTPOS network.''

- Morgan Mellish

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), November 09, 1999

Answers

'Part of the mainframe was corrupted ...

in a BANK

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 09, 1999.

Melbourne ...Australia. not New Zealand

New Zealand ... different country! as different as Japan is from China.

ANZ has branches in New Zealand but then most NZ banks are owned by companies in other countries. Only one exception I know of....

... makes me wonder about that profit figure and how much of NZ earnings are going out of NZ to overseas companies.

-- Bob Barbour (r.barbour@waikato.ac.nz), November 09, 1999.

i have been having problems getting my web banking on quicken lite to work and the customer service person said that Check Free which is part of the overall system has been down since Saturday. Y2K related or not I don't know.

-- tt (cuddluppy@yahoo.com), November 09, 1999.

Y2K related? Of course not! No banking computer problem is Y2K related. Are you out of your mind? In fact, no computer problem anywhere is Y2K related. None whatsoever. Nowhere. Even Y2K computer problems are not Y2K related. Nothing is Y2K related. Not even this forum. There is nothing related to Y2K on the face of the earth.

-- cody varian (cody@y2ksurvive.com), November 09, 1999.