Just a headsup for anyone who banks with Natwest or presumably RBS.
Their ATM network will be down from midnight tonight until 6am tomorrow morning for "Essential Maintenance". I haven't seen it advertised anywhere and only found out when I logged onto online banking to pay a bill tonight. No warning via email or text either.
If you have a Natwest Debit card as opposed to a credit card you will not be able to use it anywhere else either.
Forgive my scepticism Natwest but that smacks of more than your 'ATM' network. That's your whole card authentication system titsup.
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Surely six hours without access to an ATM is no big deal Not sure what your issue is really.
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Given RBOS's lamentable IT abilities, the chances of it being back by 6:00am is lower than a snakes belly.
And if its card authentication that is at issue it would affect all online merchant activities. So I suspect its not.
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>> Surely six hours without access to an ATM is no big deal Not sure what
>> your issue is really.
>>
For most people most of the time I quite agree.
However, if you do happen to find yourself in a position where you really need cash it could be quite the disaster.
And if you can't use your debit card, that might become a bit more likely.
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I suppose so but I really can’t imagine what it would be that couldn’t wait a few hours. Well I suppose the darker elements of the night time economy might demand cash quite forcefully.
Nearly everyone legal business accepts card payments these days. I haven’t used an ATM for 9 months.
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Lockdown etc change the equation but there must have been plenty occasions in my life where I needed cash for a taxi well after midnight.
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>> I suppose so but I really can’t imagine what it would be that couldn’t wait
>> a few hours. Well I suppose the darker elements of the night time economy might
>> demand cash quite forcefully.
>>
>> Nearly everyone legal business accepts card payments these days. I haven’t used an ATM for
>> 9 months.
>>
Didn’t he also say that debit cards wouldn’t work either? That’d be potentially annoying, less so at the moment as hotels/restaurants/bars are not open, but there’s are plenty of times when I’ve needed to pay for something after midnight, and might have only taken one card with me. Though I’d have a apple pay to fall back on I guess, unless my phone had gone flat ;)
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Same here, could count on one hand how many times I've been to a cash machine this year. Local barbers only takes cash or banker transfer and there's a few fruit and veg shops that don't take contact less.
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>Surely six hours without access to an ATM is no big deal Not sure what your issue is really.
I didn't have any 'issue'.
If you actually bothered to read my post it was, as I said in the first line, "a headsup for anyone who banks with Natwest or presumably RBS."
I carry enough cash for small items like coffee, taxis etc and everything else goes on one of my cards. After many years travelling I soon learned to carry multiple cards in case one of them isn't accepted where I am, there's a banking fault, or like last time a card gets cancelled because British £$%^ing Airways exposed my card details.
BUT, I know some folks who rely on a single debit card who could be seriously inconvenienced if they were unable to use it.
You can live in your fantasy land and believe everything that the banks say but Natwest has previous for IT cockups including incidents over the last 12 months where the whole system has gone down. No ATMs, no online banking, no mobile or point of sale and merchant payments, and no incoming or outgoing transfers including DDs and salary payments.
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BUT, I know some folks who rely on a single debit card who could be seriously inconvenienced if they were unable to use it.
Exactly.
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>>That's your whole card authentication system titsup.
Certainly doesn't sound a whole lot like planned network maintenance.
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Given that cash is almost universally accepted for small amounts, why would anyone go out with less than (say) £30+ in their wallet or purse.
This will cover the odd taxi, bus, coffee etc.
To find that overnight you suddenly realise that you need a cash machine to (say) withdraw £10 to cover the cost of a 3 mile taxi ride is plain foolish!
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Local son & Daughter in Law carry very little, if any cash.
In the last 6 months I had 2 rescue calls - supermarket shopping & card system not working. Petrol station refusing Apple Pay & no card/cash.
I am at the other end of the spectrum - very seldom pay with card, apart from online!
I pay supermarket, petrol etc with cash - works every time.
Draw £300, when it gets to under £100 I draw £300.
Benefits - Bank statements are short, nothing like the pages some people have. Impulse buys reduced as I ponder over spending "real money".
I am far from needing to watch my spending but I can look back 40+ years when I had a wife, 3 kids and 1 income. Money was never a real problem as I had a "rainy day fund" of 6 months gross pay built up before the kids appeared but it was the last resort if illness/unemployment beckoned and not to be squandered.
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>> Given that cash is almost universally accepted for small amounts, why would anyone go out
>> with less than (say) £30+ in their wallet or purse.
>>
>> This will cover the odd taxi,
Card
>>bus,
Card
>> coffee
Card
Since the CV kicked in and the tap n go limit went up, I have burned through 15 of the 30 quid I had in my wallet, so thats, what, 15 quid in 9 months?
Cash is on its toes, CV gave it a helping kick up the ass
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>> Cash is on its toes
Up to a point Lord Copper.
Those of us with houses, pensions savings and more or less unlimited access to credit don't need cash. The 17 yo single mother to be I've just been webchatting* with might be a bit different.
*In a professional capacity before the wags get the obvious gag in.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Thu 12 Nov 20 at 11:46
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Drug cartels don’t take Apple Pay (appparently).
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>>The 17 yo single mother to be I've just been webchatting* with
>> might be a bit different.
>>
>> *In a professional capacity before the wags get the obvious gag in.
>>
Oh Bromptonaut, one now has to ask who's professional capacity? :-)
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>>Cash
I hope it doesn't go down the tubes. One doesn't want every transaction tracked. I don't want Mrs Z to see how much I spent on her birthday present by looking a the bank account or credit card bill for example.
As a rule I keep a couple of grand at home in the safe. Just enough for emergency use if the banking system gets interrupted.
>> Banking systems
I wouldn't be surprised if it's not a security update. We have had a lot of concerted denial of service attacks recently and a real spate of emails trying to attack our systems.
Most get filtered but some really clever ones attack a known client's email and send doctored attachments - like a set of accounts with a hidden payload.
We still have people trying to attach devices to our computers in business centres. For example, when going to get coffees for a visiting new customer, hidden CCTV showed the new customer attach a very small pen drive to the locked laptop left in the room by the new business manager. The thing was just the size of the USB slot with nothing sticking out!
Like this but without the black bit...
uk.rs-online.com/web/p/usb-sticks/7869326
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A son used to work for an American Bank - big stuff not retail.
PC on the desk had everything tied down - no USB ports etc etc - no computing on the desktop - the PC screen & keyboard and everything transacted on a super server somewhere in space.
It's not than long ago "bank customers" attempted to insert wireless keyboard (KVM???)into bank terminals/cash machines in order to take over the PC/ATM as they were collecting the keystrokes. passwords etc etc
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It was the same when I last worked in one of the Big Five. I had a laptop and I could work from home but I couldn't use anything on my local network, like a printer or a network drive, and the USB ports were disabled. Everything took place in their cloud. Very well locked down.
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>> Everything locked down.
Working from home for one of the big banks. Allowed to use printers but not scanners.
Only one memory stick specifically encoded to the laptop and one mouse works. If the mouse dies only one replaced from head office can be used, which is a pain.
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Also I got hauled up for mailing stuff to my own account to work on. I think only certain external emails addresses could be mailed to. I also got questioned when mailing something to a country IT manager in Africa in the same company!
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Kind of reasonable though, you should be mailing links.
Depending on what I'm working on sometimes I am not permitted an electronic copy, a hardcopy with every page watermarked with my name is couriered to me so that I cannot email it. Othertimes everything is on a secure VPN to which I can neither add or remove anything.
Ultimately though if someone wants to intentionally beat the system it's close to impossible to stop them. It's usually someone introducing something by mistake which is the weakpoint.
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Links wouldn't have worked to the internal stuff. You simply weren't allowed to email outside the organisation. It was really well locked down.
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Ditto....that's when I first had a Blackberry..
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>> Oh Bromptonaut, one now has to ask who's professional capacity? :-)
I go to more mature women for that......
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>>I go to more mature women for that......
Really? I mean you're already 60ish, how much more mature can you go?
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Natwest ATMs Maintenance - CGNorwich
