Thought I would post some of the glitches that have already affected me.

2 credit cards with '00 expiration dates were declined several times, and subsequently replaced with new cards with '01 and '02 expiration dates.

All "frequent purchaser" cards issued after 1/1/99 (to expire in one year) issued by the company my wife works for were rejected as expired. Took 3 weeks to get the system remediated and back on-line. Good thing 'cause my wife has been GI ever since.

I work at a large university and 4 systems involved in inventory control of radioactive materials are in the process of being remediated and will not be finished well in to the new year. Nothing serious 'cause it can all be done manual, but I consider it an indicator of how many other remediation projects could, in reality, be progressing.

When I called one of my credit card customer service lines, they told me the computers were down for an upgrade and I could not access account information. I asked them when their system would be back "up" and they said that it should have already been, but they had encounted some "unexpected memory issues" that required further attention. Big CC company too. Y2K or not...I do not know.

Anyone like to post their experiences too?

-- loveitinthecountry (marshall2@iname.com), November 11, 1999

Answers

We had an interesting experience. We have about 3 more payment on our car financed with Chase Bank. We were late on our last payment (been busy)... And the late notice was sent to my husbands parents. My husband is a "jr". We've been dealing with these people for almost 4 years on this loan. We've been late before, they send a notice to us. This time it went to his parents. Also, they called his parents asking if they owned such and such a car. Evidently they lost all the data with our address and phone number. Very weird. (We did send in the payment)...Hey, we're it's almost paid off!

Another thing, my husband is an engineer and gets permits from the city for various projects. For two weeks he couldn't get a permit pulled because they were working on y2k. Now, they are able to generate permits to some degree, but we wound up with an extra $200.00 in our escrow account at the city.

Also, GTE is our phone provider and the lady in the office told us they were working on their computer a few weeks ago when I called in a problem. Our phone just suddenly goes dead for no reason. Later we get a busy signal instead of a dial tone. This is an intermittent problem that seems to be getting better.

Oh, and I was in Petsmart a few days back and the cash registers were ringing up about every 4th item wrong. People were getting very irate, because it was taking so long to check out.

That's it so far....

inthecountrytoo

-- inthecountrytoo (we'vehadafew@texas.net), November 11, 1999.

Was transferring funds from one account to another and the computers were down. They handed me a handwritten receipt. I told then this was totally unacceptable since they can say that I stole the receipt and wrote in whatever. Then I pointed to the sign hanging on their wall "Y2K READY." I told them they should take it down and quit lying to the customers.

-- ~~~~~ (~~~~@~~~.com), November 12, 1999.

Inthecountrytoo,

Hey, I have a question for you... conserning GTE. I too have been haveing phone trouble. Do you live in Illnios? We do. Our trouble goes like this...... One day out of the blue, one of our phone lines (we have two) will be fuzzy/dead/buzy, and the other will be fine. I call the problem in on the other line.... they say we see a problem and we will be out tomorrow to check out your line. Well usually within about 1 hour of the call.... poof! The line is fixed. They call me back and say... we seem to have fixed the problem, I ask what was the problem.... they say, we dont know. 'We dont know?' Since when dont they know?

This is not a one time problem.... I sware, if it has happened once, it has happened 10 times in the last 2 months! I am soooo tired of the phones not working right.

Sorry to vent.... just had to get it out.

-- bulldog (sniffin@around.com), November 12, 1999.

bulldog,

Yes, that's the same kind of problem. We live in Texas. In fact, it disconnects my computer 2 or 3 times a day. When we call, they say, "We don't show any problem with your line". It has gotten somewhat better recently but still having a few problems. They don't seem to be able to isolate the problem. We live in a rural area if that matters.

inthecountry

-- liveinthecountry (we'vehadafew@texas.net), November 12, 1999.

Hi,

We also have GTE and have had the same problem with the phone. Line goes dead or we just get a busy signal over and over. Drives ya nuts!!

Also have a 00 credit card that fails occasionally.

Power will go off and on, sometimes for an hour or more.

And now.... Bresnan Communications(cableTV) is going off constantly. It was off an entire day last week.

Is it Y2K related? Who knows? My guess is they are testing.

-- (GTE@customer.com), November 12, 1999.

Phone problems? Aren't they all caused by squirrels...?

-- not sure (memory@is.blurry), November 12, 1999.

I work for the USPS in Texas. About 2 weeks ago the program used in our letter sorting machines(CSBCS) were upgrades to vers 3.03a. The mechanic told us "this is so they will work next year.....it's the Y2K upgrade". The new version in completely incompatable with the old. Our operation was disrupted for 2 days. (production time doubled or tripled) We had to redo the route schemes and bar coded route cards. (about 8 hrs of post-remediation remediation). There may be other problems that havent surfaced yet. Apparantly this was not tested. The problems were discovered earlier (supposedly in Chicago area) but it was too late to fix and shipped as is. A note was attached warning of this problem but it was inadequate to preent the problem from being repeated. I wonder how many other offices are finding this out the hard way. Here's the kicker. After all that, the program still creates daily post run data files labeled using the 2 digit (dd/mm/yy) format. If this is any indication of how other companies are doing, we're screwed.

-- Cliff (barstool@cheers.com), November 12, 1999.

I was at a monstrous hotel in Anaheim and their newly remediated computers blank-screened for two days. Who's registered? Who's checked out? Who's got a reservation? Which rooms are empty? To support Decker's and Flint's arguments, they did manual workarounds at great pain). Nonetheless, it was an eye opening mess. The funniest part: I was trying to convert a friend/DWGI at the bar while chaos was mounting in the atrium. He is still a DWGI a year later, but seems a little more attentive to my concerns.

-- Dave (aaa@aaa.com), November 12, 1999.