BSN botched upgrade leaves customers in a lurch

Government owned Bank Simpanan Nasional(BSN) is in a bit of a sticky situation after a planned system upgrade to their banking system left customers with cash balances that does not tally with their actual balance.

This is just one of the many issues that has left customers up in arms with the planned system upgrade which originally took place from 31st August to 4th September. Unfortunately, even after the 4th of September, there still remains numerous issues with the system which are yet to be solved until today.

On the 4th of September, BSN released a statement confirming that the upgrading works were not complete, and that operations will resume ‘gradually’ without giving any indicative time frame of how long this would take. Customers who did manage to get to access the system however noticed that their account balances did not tally with their actual balances.

BSN on the 5th of September clarified that they new system only displays the customers available balance instead of their actual balance. Available balance in the sense that it factors in a deduction of the minimum balance needed in their accounts to maintain the account. We found this rather amusing, if the system was indeed designed in such a way. What we found even more amusing was their notice which they released on the 5th of September.

The notice specifically addresses the deduction issue by confirming that the balance available deducts the minimum balance amount needed to maintain the account. However, the examples also show that an account can actually display a negative balance available for withdrawal.

By 6th of September they decided to remove this completely ridiculous feature (if it was a feature to begin with, we think its more of an issue with a faulty upgrade).

While this issue was solved, customers still were raining in complaints via BSN’s social media pages over missing transactions, inaccessibility of the online banking service and even some who are still reporting in missing balances in their accounts.

Considering that it is now almost 10 days since the initial upgrade took place, BSN’s lack of response to its customers on social media channel leaves a lot of question marks on the credibility of the bank. While it is acceptable that even well planned upgrades run into issues, it should not take this long to get things rectified.

Get your act together BSN.