TSB payment delays suggest second IT meltdown

TSB customers have said they have been unable to login to their online bank accounts and have yet to receive payments in what could be a fresh IT disaster for the company.

Complaints aired on Twitter also suggest that customers have had difficulty finding information, with many customers being unable to contact the bank and one customer being told there were, in fact, no issues with the company's online banking services.

The bank has issued a short statement on Twitter offering 'emergency cash' to customers, but without any explanation for the issue.

"Some payments into TSB accounts have been delayed overnight and we are working to process these as soon as possible today. We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused and will ensure customers are not left out-of-pocket," the bank said.

The reports follow the release of an independent investigation into the major outage the bank suffered in 2018 as a result of a botched IT migration. Customers were shut out of online accounts and some were able to see the details of other users.

On Wednesday, Law firm Slaughter and May concluded that the outage was due to TSB's "incredibly complicated" attempt to migrate five million customer records in a new system that lacked robust testing.

It's unclear exactly what has gone wrong this time as the company has yet to reply to requests for comment, and some customers are being told that earlier Tweets regarding emergency cash would be taken down in an apparent attempt to defuse the situation.

"This is also a lie... just been on the phone to #tsb and they said this tweet should be getting taken down, and I couldn't ger any emergency cash," Emma Fullarton wrote.

Another customer that claimed to have spoken to TSB said that it couldn't offer an update on payments and suggested that there should be some consequences.

"Just spoken to TSB customer service and they still cannot say if wages will be paid into accounts today. Surely heads need to role over this lack of leadership and planning @TSB. How many times do we need to be subjected to this crap?" wrote TSB customer Paul Gilhooley.

Paul Pester left his role as TSB's CEO in September 2018 as a result of his handling of the outage. He has since been replaced by Debbie Crosbie.