If you are a Unionbank accountholder, chances are you know what happened the whole day yesterday until early today. They went offline! Yes, the bank was offline for hours and hours on end! According to their customer service reps, the bank was undergoing system maintenance. This is the first time I’ve heard of a bank system maintenance that lasted longer than an hour! It actually lasted more than a day! What was so annoying about what happened was there was no advisory at all!

I read their Facebook page discussion a few hours ago. I read irate accountholders who were relying on their ATMs to be able to get cash. I know there are people out there who only keep a minimum amount of money they need for the day or the week. So what happens to them now that the bank was offline the whole day? No withdrawal via ATM or over-the-counter. You couldn’t even use online banking as the whole bank’s system was really unavailable!

There was a woman who said that she needed to withdraw her kids’ allowance for yesterday. You could tell how irate she was. One mentioned that he was looking for work and was hungry but opted not to eat because he couldn’t get money from his account. My sister and I were supposed to enroll Hazel yesterday but since we couldn’t access both our accounts, we’re just going back today. It was too much hassle for everyone!

I just checked an hour ago and Unionbank‘s system is back up. I immediately checked my balances and it’s intact, thank God. I hope that when something like this happens again, Unionbank would have given an advisory beforehand so that their accountholders can prepare.

But something’s nagging me since I talked to their CS reps and both couldn’t give me a direct answer… was their system hacked that’s why it took their IT guys longer to fix it??? I hope not.

Note: Thumbs up to the customer service representatives of Unionbank for patiently answering the calls and responding to tweets and Facebook messages of concerned accountholders like me. They were also profusely apologizing for what happened. That’s customer service!

Unionbank Twitter account - http://www.twitter.com/unionbankph
Unionbank Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/unionbankph