Netbank Breakdown Poses Bigger Questions

Being a CBA customer, I was hit by the Netbank meltdown last week, which was inconvenient to say the least.

For those of you who don’t know, transaction data for the past two months was ‘lost’ on the CBA’s Netbank service for the best part of a week and was restored yesterday. For a small business like mine, right at the end of the financial year, this posed a bit of problem as far as reconciliation of accounts go, but there were a couple of bigger questions that this problem posed.

Being a 21st century kind of guy, and an embracer of technology, it wasn’t lost on me, that written, hard copy records of banking transactions still have a place in modern society. I have used internet banking for some time now, so the idea of getting physical statements was not something I’d thought of in a while. Until last week.

There were a couple of minor irritations, too. I thought the lack of contact and transparency from the CBA was pretty poor. I know they must have been run off their feet trying to fix the problem, but having to find out via Netbank, with not much of an explanation was not good enough. They could have at least emailed, or put something up on their main website, about the problem, its cause, and when they expected it to be fixed. Sure, it must have been stressful for them, but what about small businesses like me trying to get our accounts sorted? There was minimal contact, and talk of what they thought was some sort of cyber-attack.

This, on the back of the CBA not passing on interest rate cuts to customers, leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of some customers. If this was an end of year school report, a tick would go next to “could do better”.