Customers of one of Australia’s biggest banks were locked out of their finances on Monday as a major outage sparked “absolute chaos”.
Commonwealth Bank informed customers on Monday morning it was experiencing issues with its app and Netbank services.
Customers were greeted with an error message that states, “current balance unavailable, we’ll show your balance from the last time you logged on” when opening their banking app.
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Desktop customers were also met with the message: “Sorry, something’s gone wrong.”
“We are aware some customers are experiencing difficulties accessing some of our services and we are urgently investigating,” the bank said.
“We are sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.”
In an update at 4pm, Commonwealth Bank said services were recovering.
“We can confirm we have identified the cause of the issue and services are being restored,” it said.
The bank said there may continue to be delays in some payments as services are brought back online.
Earlier, Commonwealth Bank asked customers to refrain from joining lengthy customer service call centre queues.
“Our call centres are experiencing high volumes of customer inquiries at the moment due to this incident and there are longer than usual wait times,” it said.
“Instead of waiting, please visit our website at www.commbank.com.au/updates we are providing the latest information available.”
More than 3,000 customers reported issues with accessing their services by 9am, according to Down Detector.
Customers aired their frustrations on social media, with many saying it was “ridiculous” to not be able to access their money.
Several users reported being stuck on hold waiting to pay for groceries or petrol as they were unable to access their accounts.
“Netbank is down. Absolute chaos is in progress. First day of school holidays, and CommBank has had a meltdown. No online transfers, ATMs, or EFT. Don’t try calling, lines are jammed,” one person tweeted.
“Any clues why the app and online banking are down? I need to transfer money to my spending account to buy groceries and pay bills today,” another said.
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