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Simple ATM cards being declined

status.simple.com

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Re: Simple ATM cards being declined

#31

Post by hosay123 »

jacquesm wrote: post #23

I don't have anything to do with 'simple' but I'm working with a group of people on another system somewhere in the payment chain. In banking failure is not an option, a little detail that I keep having to drill into my collegues, some of who would rather have an MVP with the occasional bit of downtime than something a lot more solid. So for now we're stuck in the 'hurd' loop. Within any start-up there are always dif…

Just to contrast this a little, what you paint here is a panacea, while the reality is that even just this year 10 million accounts in the UK were out of order for a period of months due to a reliability problem: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/25/how-natwest...

Re: Simple ATM cards being declined

#32

Post by anona »

hosay123 wrote: post #21
ConstantineXVI wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't cut them any slack. I can't say my bank cards have ever gone down. Totally losing access to your customer's money doesn't help your reputation at all, "disruptor" or not. EDIT: "The Bancorp Bank", the bank Simple farms out the actual banking to, has been around since 2000[0]. Simple _might_ have an excuse for screwing up like this if this was all their own system, but an established bank doesn't. [0] http:…

The inverse of this is exactly why I'd cut them slack: there's no way for them to do business without partnering with the competition, in this case being solely dependent on them. Edit: it's exactly like trying to reinvent Twitter by consuming their APIs, and we've all seen how that goes

They are dealing with people's money, and should be held to the same standard as every other business in that space.

They also don't deserve any special 'slack' just because they use other companies services. You wouldn't accept that excuse from Bank of America.

Re: Simple ATM cards being declined

#33

Post by gojomo »

Sibling threads touting banks as paragons of reliability, with any momentary loss-of-access-to-funds as unforgivable, must have been dealing with a different banking system than me.

With major banks like BofA, Citibank, and others, I've had…

• credit cards often disabled for fraud-alert false alarms

• check deposits sometimes subject to mysterious fund-availability delays

• individual ATM clusters or whole ATM networks down for short periods

• account information and ATM withdrawals sometimes unavailable during 'system maintenance' hours (often early Sunday AM)

• a check erroneously bounced by a major bank (BofA) when both available-by-rule funds and enrolled 'overdraft protection' would have each been individually able to cover the check amount

• my ATM card unusable while traveling to the exotic third-world locale of Ottawa, Canada due to some sort of more-than-one-day network security issue

Stuff happens, to banks also. Cut Simple some slack.

Re: Simple ATM cards being declined

#34

Post by jacquesm »

zaidf wrote: post #30
jacquesm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be unforgiving. I have no idea what the root cause behind this is but testing roll-over is obviously part & parcel of the level of reliability required in the financial world. Allowed: scheduled downtime announced ahead of time for reporting, unscheduled downtime with localized effect due to 'acts of god'. Not allowed: customers can't access their funds when they should be able to. When you disrupt the ban…

you especially should be doing at least as good as the established parties do in the reliability department. Easy to say but I think it is unreasonable to expect a company that is couple years old to have as much reliability as ones who have had decades to figure it out. I think the Simple customers have every right be absolutely pissed. For some, they may even realize that the downside of going with Simple isn't jus…

Try explaining how less reliability is acceptable to the guy that is out of gas trying to get home.

Payment systems have an impact that is unlike any other system.

It's very well possible that lives depend on your system working. You may never know about it but you should definitely build as though they do.

You can't build financial software the same way that you build some CRUD site or the latest social fad.

Re: Simple ATM cards being declined

#35

Post by gojomo »

ConstantineXVI wrote: post #17
hosay123 wrote: post #5

Ordinarily I might consider this worth a loss in reputation, but given the uniquely one-sided battle that is trying to cause any disruption in the banking industry, I'd be willing to cut these guys some slack. In this area the enemy has big guns

I wouldn't cut them any slack. I can't say my bank cards have ever gone down. Totally losing access to your customer's money doesn't help your reputation at all, "disruptor" or not. EDIT: "The Bancorp Bank", the bank Simple farms out the actual banking to, has been around since 2000[0]. Simple _might_ have an excuse for screwing up like this if this was all their own system, but an established bank doesn't. [0] http:…

Unless you use your bank cards every hour of every day, you don't know for sure if you've ever lost access, perhaps for longer than this Simple outage. Maybe you've just been lucky enough not to try access when it was out.

Re: Simple ATM cards being declined

#36

Post by jacquesm »

hosay123 wrote: post #31
jacquesm wrote: post #23

I don't have anything to do with 'simple' but I'm working with a group of people on another system somewhere in the payment chain. In banking failure is not an option, a little detail that I keep having to drill into my collegues, some of who would rather have an MVP with the occasional bit of downtime than something a lot more solid. So for now we're stuck in the 'hurd' loop. Within any start-up there are always dif…

Just to contrast this a little, what you paint here is a panacea, while the reality is that even just this year 10 million accounts in the UK were out of order for a period of months due to a reliability problem: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/25/how-natwest...

That looks like their settlement batches were no longer accepted. They deserve to lose their customers / go bust over that. Natwest will survive because not all their customers care about such stuff to the same extent, some may not even find out. Others are bound by their mortgages to have checking accounts with Natwest.

I didn't say that those things don't happen. I said that they are not acceptable. The fact that others fuck up does not give you an excuse to fuck up.

These are exactly the kind of discussions that I was hinting at above.

Re: Simple ATM cards being declined

#37

Post by jacquesm »

gojomo wrote: post #33

Sibling threads touting banks as paragons of reliability, with any momentary loss-of-access-to-funds as unforgivable, must have been dealing with a different banking system than me. With major banks like BofA, Citibank, and others, I've had… • credit cards often disabled for fraud-alert false alarms • check deposits sometimes subject to mysterious fund-availability delays • individual ATM clusters or whole ATM networ…

Errors on individual transactions and reporting being unavailable is not the same as transactions simply not happening at all.

Stuff happens to banks and then people switch to other banks, especially when you're a new player.

If my bank did this to me I'd be gone instantly, I almost did just over their inability to keep telebanking working through a denial of service attack, and then blaming it on the hackers. All my cards (credit, debit across several companies and private accounts) link back to the same bank. If that bank does not do its job I can't do mine.

ATM and pos worked fine during that period, if it had not I'd be gone for sure.

Re: Simple ATM cards being declined

#38

Post by gojomo »

jacquesm wrote: post #26
zaidf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is being unforgiving to new entrants in a typically scary industry the type of behavior that will encourage new competition?

You should be unforgiving. I have no idea what the root cause behind this is but testing roll-over is obviously part & parcel of the level of reliability required in the financial world. Allowed: scheduled downtime announced ahead of time for reporting, unscheduled downtime with localized effect due to 'acts of god'. Not allowed: customers can't access their funds when they should be able to. When you disrupt the ban…

I highly doubt Simple's invite-only early-adopters are dependent on their Simple card as their only way to buy beer and/or (your downthread example) gas for the drive home. (And I hope they're not using their card for both on the same night.) #firstWorldProblems

Re: Simple ATM cards being declined

#39

Post by hrktb »

jacquesm wrote: post #23

I don't have anything to do with 'simple' but I'm working with a group of people on another system somewhere in the payment chain. In banking failure is not an option, a little detail that I keep having to drill into my collegues, some of who would rather have an MVP with the occasional bit of downtime than something a lot more solid. So for now we're stuck in the 'hurd' loop. Within any start-up there are always dif…

This is the right stance I believe. Sadly there seems to be a more and more failures creeping up in banking and payment processing areas, and people seem to get used to it. I had two different banks fail on me (operations not actually aknowledged when the interface was showing otherwise, error on payments because of misreadings of the state of the accounts, two factor authentication down under peak load) the last month.

It feels a bit like when the general public got used to see computer fails, and "the computer is never wrong" mental image became a "it crashes from times to times, you just have to reboot" one.

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