
Simple ATM cards being declined - suneel0101
http://status.simple.com/
======
jacquesm
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 differing opinions on the level of
reliability required. My first real job in IT was with the Dutch division of
the Chase Mannhattan bank, they made it pretty clear upon hiring me that they
did not mind hiring me into a responsible position as young as I was but that
my first fuck-up would also be my last. I'm not sure if they would actually
follow through on that promise but it certainly made me a bit more wary and
more responsible. The fact that I ended up leaving of my own accord means that
their threat probably had its intended effect.

When you're in the payment chain, whether as an IPSP, a bank or something else
that directly affects peoples income and ability to function in society you
have no excuse other than 'meteor fragments took out all three of our
datacenters'.

Stuff is up, check-totals are at '0', transactions are never lost. 24 hours,
365 (of 366) days per year.

If you can't do that don't bother playing.

The bank I'm with (Rabobank in nl) lost a lot of respect from me (after
building that up for 2 decades) when they blamed a bunch of down time on
'hackers'. What bugged me even more than the fact that they were down was the
fact that they wanted to blame another party for being down.

The one thing I'll leave a little bit of room for is capacity issues during
the holiday shopping spree, but even that is pretty bad form and indicative of
very bad planning.

Judging by the post the error lies with Simple's partner, unfortunately for
Simple customers will likely not care about that at all. To them their simple
card doesn't work when they expect it to work.

I hope for simple they'll be able to fix this very quickly.

~~~
hosay123
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...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/25/how-natwest-it-
meltdown)

~~~
jacquesm
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.

------
jaysonelliot
Simple has earned such goodwill with me for their amazing customer service,
zero fees (even for overdrafts), and overall customer experience that I'm
happy to give them a pass on this.

The fact that they're being proactive about their status updates, and
transparently honest, helps a lot, too.

A relationship with a bank is a lot like a relationship with a doctor: bedside
manner is sometimes the most important element to patient (customer)
satisfaction - sometimes even surpassing outcomes, as long as it's not too
serious.

------
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

~~~
lsc
>If that bank does not do its job I can't do mine.

If banking is that important to you, then perhaps you ought to consider
redundant providers? I mean, that's what you do with connectivity. you don't
rely on one provider with a good sla; no, you get two providers.

~~~
jacquesm
There are quite a few problems that come with setting up double accounts for
every company that I'm involved with. You'd have to spread the funds around in
such a way that you could cover any contingency from any account, which in
effect would mean that you's need twice the money. It also means a lot more
work for the bookkeeper, two two factor auth tokens to keep on me, two account
managers to manage, double the contracts and so on.

They deal I have with my bank is simple: they do their work, they get to keep
transaction fees, screw me on the interbank interest rates and delay foreign
transactions just long enough that they can go play with my cash. In return I
expect them to deliver one thing: utter reliability.

If it gets to the point that there is no single bank that gives me the feeling
that they can do just that I will indeed have to split assets across several
banks. (there are other good reasons to do that, such as the maximum insured
balance per account holder).

But the costs of doing so are what is holding me from that.

------
AngryParsley
It looks like this started around Jan 1 00:00:00 UTC 2013.

I wonder if it's related to the leap second bug discovered in July.
Apparently, a some popular NTP servers incorrectly sent out leap seconds at
midnight. Even if it's not that specific issue, I bet the root cause is a
time-keeping bug.

------
hosay123
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

~~~
ConstantineXVI
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://www.thebancorp.com/about/>

~~~
hosay123
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

~~~
ConstantineXVI
The Twitter comparison doesn't work here; Bancorp is explicitly a middleman.
As long as Bancorp is getting paid, it's in their best interest (excuse the
pun) for Simple to stay afloat.

Bancorp is a closer analog to EC2; they let Simple get off the ground quickly
without having to build and harden their own banking systems and transaction
networks. Also like EC2, Simple gets to take the heat equally if Bancorp
screws up.

That said, this is pretty bad, but if Simple had built their own network and
left a glaring security hole open, they'd be utter toast.

~~~
hosay123
In the context of Wikileaks, Visa and Amazon were explicitly middlemen. As
long as Visa and Amazon were paid, it was in their best interest <snip>

No doubt you already see where I'm going with this.

------
whalesalad
Uhh. This is quite catastrophic actually. Not being able to access your funds
at all really blows.

~~~
dmix
Running a bank is like being a cop, the stakes are high for fucking up.

~~~
w1ntermute
The difference being that banks are (relatively) open to free market forces,
while the police is not.

~~~
dmix
Unless you're an exceptionally large bank :).

------
fossuser
I was hit with this, but like I'd imagine every other simple user just pulled
out a credit card. I figured it was some issue with Subway's card reader on
University, guess it wasn't.

------
6thSigma
All news is good news? I had never heard of Simple before this and am now
semi-interested in getting a card..

~~~
ww520
What do they do? What benefits they offer over traditional banks or credit
cards?

~~~
6thSigma
They provide a much better UX for debit cards.

------
josephagoss
It looks like they are trying to do good, however Banking is not like Google
or Amazon cloud. Whilst the odd downtime happens with these technology
companies, people forgive and move on, but banking really is different.

If my bank went down losing access to my money, I would be naked, I don't
always have cash and money is our oxygen is this society, a absolute
essential. Hopefully the downtime for Simple will be short, but if they had
100 million people using them as their main bank and this happened, you could
expect mass exodus the next day.

The only time I have lost access to my money was a few years ago when VISA or
MASTERCARD went down (or both), with them you don't have a choice and everyone
lost access to their money, but if ever just one bank went down it wouldn't
turn out good at all.

------
sync
I have six invites for any adventurous HNers interested in living life on the
edge.

~~~
icelancer
Would love one. kyle.boddy@gmail.com.

------
barredo
I'm just curious: who is their transaction partner?

~~~
nullrouted
<http://www.thebancorp.com/about/> is their partner bank so I'm guessing the
issue is there.

------
gerred
This actually bit me last night. It was a little bit embarrassing, but it all
worked out in the end.

------
jacquesm
They're back up.

