
British bank shuts website until April 2012 - sunsai
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/06/halifax_shuts_site_for_a_year/
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melvinram
Everyone's thinking it so I'll say it: WTF?!

If Wells Fargo turned off online banking for 1 month, I'd switch banks.

I wonder if they are handling everything in-house or have hired external
consultants/company to build out this wonderful new site & mobile app that
will take a full year.

Now if their current system had a major exploit and the only way to fix it is
to rewrite the whole thing, I guess they have no choice. At the very least
they should have put together a temporary "read only" type of site that
involve less/no risk on their part and provide their call centers a bit of
relief.

Ballsy move (and not in a good way.)

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nudge
Just to clarify, it's not _entirely_ down. It's just investments. I use this
bank for checking and credit card and they're both fine.

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kapitalx
Sure, but the point continues to stand. Why not continue to provide the
current site until the new one is complete and then do a switch. Unless, as
melvinram mentioned, somehow there is some costly exploit that cannot be fixed
unless everything is redone and its dangerous to keep the site up until its
rewritten.

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tomjen3
This is what happens when you bail out companies: you end up with a bunch of
dynosaurs stumbling like the savages they are.

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mikealeo
Scottish banks were bailed out? I'm not sure if you think this is an American
bank, or I just don't know enough about Scotland's economics.

~~~
JonnieCache
Scotland is part of the united kingdom. The royal bank of scotland is a UK
bank and it was bailed out by the UK government.

The UK is a country comprised of four countries. Don't worry, the people that
live here don't understand it either.

Great Britain is simply a geographical term applied to the actual archipelago
itself.

The economic relationship between scotland and the rest of the country,
particularly the government in london is a vexed question that is seen as
being badly in need of a solution, but it has been pushed aside in the current
economic situation.

It's basically down to the fact that while scotland has partial legislative
autonomy, it is unable to raise its own tax revenues independently, but it is
much deeper and more complicated than this. See
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/West_Lothian_...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/West_Lothian_Question)

~~~
semanticist
While that's all true, RBS isn't the bank in question.

Also, both RBS and Lloyds Banking Group (who bought/'merged with' HBOS, which
was the result of the merger of Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and it's
Halifax's online banking the story is about) do have special Scottish-only
rights, like printing banknotes.

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bittermang
Frankly, if their intentions are to build a site which is more secure, and
there was a gaping security flaw with the existing site, then it is good news
that it won't be available for a year.

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flyt
Palo Alto's utility company did the same thing while they rebuilt their bill
pay site. Really frustrating as a user, especially for a city at the heart of
the Valley.

