A system upgrade is being blamed for leaving tens of thousands of Australians without access to their online bank accounts.

Key points:

  • People’s Choice Credit Union customers say they have been unable to access online banking
  • The company says online banking is working again, but slowly
  • Customers say they are still having problems

People’s Choice Credit Union customers said the outage began on Sunday, and that they had not been able to log in to their account since then.

Others said they had been able to sign in after waiting several minutes, although they could not see their transaction history.

In an email sent last night, People’s Choice chief executive Steve Laidlaw assured customers their funds were safe.

“It is unacceptable that you’ve been unable to access your funds for such a long time. You expect complete reliability from our systems, as do I,” Mr Laidlaw wrote.

Customers say they are having trouble using the credit union’s app.(ABC News: Emma Wynne)

Adelaide-based People’s Choice claims on its website to have 375,000 customers across Australia, with 27 branches in South Australia and nine interstate.

The company has also taken to social media to update customers on the problem.

This morning, it posted on Twitter: “We understand the issue many of you have experienced is related to an upgrade in our IT system. While there are still delays, there is an improvement in App and Internet Banking performance.”

Customers still having trouble

The majority of responses from customers have been less than forgiving.

Many on Wednesday afternoon were still reporting not being able to log into the mobile banking app, while others said they were able to sign into the internet banking but after a lengthy delay.

“I could only access my quick balance at 2:30am!!!!! Still CANNOT get into my accounts, and I cannot afford to wait to get through to the call centre,” one customer wrote.

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Others have threatened to change financial institutions over the debacle.

One user wrote: “You people are going the right way about it if you are expecting customers to find another, more reliable banking experience!”

Yet another customer called for staff to be sacked over the three-day interruption.

“Hi. I believe as a voting member of People’s Choice I want to start a petition that the IT team are fired,” the person wrote.

“In a massive company like this one, why would you not do upgrade testing on another dummy server to make sure there are no issues before rolling it out to the main server?”

One member, Cassandra McRae, was even contacted by the credit union after she failed to make a home loan repayment because of the glitch.

She tried to go into a branch but was told that her payment could not be processed there either.

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She said the lack of communication from the credit union had been a serious problem.

“I think their PR could’ve handled this in a way that would at least let us know that they know, they’re working on it — yes, OK, it might be out of their control, but they’re doing something about it,” she said.

“But to get a snotty attitude because their systems don’t work, what am I supposed to do with that?”

In a statement, People’s Choice acknowledged customers were “experiencing slower than normal connection speeds for their internet banking and mobile banking app”, leading to many of them abandoning their attempts to log on.

It said there were no issues with banking phone banking, branches or people using cards.

“We understand this is not acceptable, and we will be working with members adversely impacted by this issue.

“Fixing this matter is our absolute priority.”