Customers shut out of accounts for hours during Bank of America system outage

Bank of America customers were shut out from their accounts for several hours Wednesday in a system outage.

Coral Springs resident Eric Sleeper said he got what looked like a phishing email from the bank Wednesday and immediately started calling customer service to see if something was wrong. A message on his online account said it could not pull up his information.

When he called his local branch, a manager said that local managers were all calling each other trying to figure out what caused what appeared to be a national outage and why they were unable to provide certain services.

On Downdetector.com, a website that tracks reports of system outages, reports starting spiking after 11:30 a.m. and the website was inundated with comments from Bank of America customers around the country saying they couldn’t access online banking from their applications or computers, transfer money or deposit money or checks. Customers also reported that several branches’ operations were down.

By 1 p.m., the website had received nearly 1,000 reports of problems.

But by Wednesday evening, although some customers were still reporting problems, the number of reports had gone down considerably to about 200. By Thursday afternoon, reports of issues had decreased to fewer than 10.

Bank of America spokeswoman Jumana Bauwens said Wednesday the bank was aware of the issues with mobile and online banking and is working to fix the problem. Bauwens added that many of the customers who were experiencing difficulties now have accounts that are operating normally.

“I know that the team is working quickly to bring everything back up. As time progresses they should be able to go back online,” Bauwens said.

When asked what caused the outage, Bauwens said she “did not have that information.”

On Twitter, users across the country were reporting issues accessing their accounts.

“@BankofAmerica system wide outage on the day I’m closing on my house and there is nothing they can do about it,” tweeted Twitter user @CapricornLove7.

“The clerk at @BankofAmerica just said I can't make a deposit [because] if [sic] a nationwide disruption. Anyone know what's up?,” tweeted user @Henkenius.

This story was originally published July 19, 2017 at 2:36 PM with the headline "Customers shut out of accounts for hours during Bank of America system outage."