Several of CIMB Bank’s online and offline services faced issues throughout the whole of yesterday, causing customers to flock en masse to its social media to enquire or lodge complaints. The glitches were eventually resolved, with all services back to normal by 9.15pm, but the severity of the downtime was significant.

According to a report by Lowyat.NET, services that saw interruption throughout the day included the CIMB Clicks mobile app, ATMs, cash deposit machines (CDM), as well as in-store card payments (debit and credit). CIMB branches in various locations were forced to put up physical notices to alert the public of the unavailable services – with some of them affected nationwide, as you can see from the sign put up at CIMB’s Sentul branch at 1.20pm yesterday:

CIMB’s Mid Valley Megamall branch, too, put up notices to indicate that systems were offline:

Lowyat.NET also reported that it was not possible to make money transfers and FPX payments via the CIMB Clicks website at approximately 4pm, with the money transfer option completely disabled in the CIMB Clicks app. Interbank money transfers from non-CIMB accounts were not successful either.

Unsurprisingly, many customers had trouble reaching the CIMB customer service yesterday, with the bank itself claiming that it had to attend to a high volume of calls. CIMB also did not provide a notice to explain the disruption in service during the day despite messages from the public on both its Facebook and Twitter accounts.

CIMB eventually responded with two statements in the evening – once at approximately 9pm to apologise for the “intermittent disruption”, and then once more slightly later to mention that it has fully restored all services at 9.15pm. Here’s CIMB’s first statement to Lowyat.NET reproduced in full:

“CIMB would like to apologise to our customers for the intermittent disruption earlier today to our Instant Transfer feature via CIMB Clicks. As an alternative, customers were able to use Interbank Giro Transfer service to perform fund transfers on Clicks that remained available throughout.

Other affected services included interbank ATM transactions with non-CIMB banks. However, we would like to reassure customers that our ATMs continue to be in operation for CIMB customers for all other services, including cash withdrawals and deposits.

The disruption to the instant transfer service on CIMB Clicks has now been resolved and we are working hard to restore our interbank ATM service very soon. We appreciate your kind patience and understanding in this matter.”

Despite the reassurances and alternatives provided, CIMB’s statement seemed to contradict some of the disruptions that customers experienced during the day, such as the non-functioning cash withdrawal and deposit machines. The bank also neglected to address issues such as unsuccessful credit and debit card payments, and did not shed light on the cause behind the major downtime either.

Our own quick check on CIMB’s social media pages today further indicated that despite CIMB’s claims that all services are fully restored, some customers are still unable to log in to their CIMB Clicks app or online banking accounts. Many also said that they could not get through to the customer service hotline.

This round of disruption is the latest in a line of recurrent difficulties faced by CIMB in providing services to its customers. Earlier in January this year, the instant transfer feature in CIMB Clicks also faced some issues for two days, although the impact of the interruption then was not as extensive as this round’s.

(Source: Lowyat.NET)

• TAGS:
• CIMB
• CIMB Bank
• CIMB Clicks
• CIMB Clicks Downtime
• Instant Transfer
• Online Banking
• Online Banking Issues