HBoS power failure causes chaos for weekend shoppers

Christmas shopping was disrupted for thousands of shoppers on Saturday following the nationwide failure of Halifax and Bank of Scotland ATM machines.

The holes-in-the-wall were rendered unusable from early Saturday morning to mid-afternoon after a power failure at an IT centre in Yorkshire occurred. The outage also affected access to customers’ accounts via online banking although in-branch systems were less disrupted and customers were allowed to withdraw money at the counter, although staff had to record transactions on paper.

Power was eventually restored around 2.30pm but the failure saw huge queues forming at ATMs operated by other banks with some customers having their cards rejected at these ATMs also, as well as in shops as systems could not access the card details.

An HBOS spokeswoman said: “We apologise to customers for the disruption and inconvenience this is causing.”

Last month, NatWest was hit by a similar problem which was also caused by an IT breakdown.

We know that banks are reluctant to give out money in these trying economic times, but is shutting down the whole system nationwide really the answer to ensuring they hold onto their cash?

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