Many Bank of America customers opened their accounts to a surprise: They apparently had no money.
This was, of course, nothing more than a glitch in the system. Bank of America said "some mobile and online banking clients experienced an issue accessing their accounts and balance information" on Wednesday. While the banking giant did not share details of what was behind the problems, the bank did say the issues were being addressed and "have been fully resolved."
Users started reporting outages at Bank of America on the site DownDetector shortly after 12 p.m. ET Wednesday, with reports peaking at about 1:30 p.m. Reports of problems have since dropped off, although there were still a handful of users reporting issues as of Thursday morning.
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The bank serves 69 million U.S. consumer and small business clients, with over 15,000 ATMs in the U.S. Bank of America / Merrill Lynch Wealth Management were voted by our readers in Kiplinger Readers' Choice Awards for wealth managers earlier this year with recognition for trustworthy advisers.
Bank of America customers said on Reddit they weren't able to log into their accounts on the app or online. Some who were able to log in encountered account balances of $0.00.
"My account says ‘some accounts are temporarily unavailable,’ and there are dashes showing for my savings and debit card balances. However, when I click on the account directly, I can see the balance," one person wrote on Reddit.
On top of obvious concerns about where their money went, people were worried about if they'd be able to make payments, like for rent and home renovations, or if they'd be hit with overdrafts. Credit card balances, however, were still appearing, customers noted — not without some snark.
As more of our lives move online, technical glitches like this seem to be becoming more frequent. A massive CrowdStrike tech outage this summer, for instance, led to problems at airports and hospitals and for 911 systems and some TV broadcasters. In that case, though, financial systems were largely unaffected. While we're also becoming used to data breaches in cyberattacks, it's important to note that not all tech outages are caused by nefarious actors. The CrowdStrike outage, for example, was from a tech update gone wrong.
Even so, it's important to stay calm and vigilant in cases like this. Don't do anything you wouldn't do on any other day, like transferring or accepting transfers of money from unknown actors. If you get a call or text from an unfamiliar number saying it's from your bank and asking for identifying information, hang up and call the bank directly.
Some impacted customers took the outage in stride. One reported user wrote on Reddit: "Zero balance for me. Good timing, though. I'm about to go through a divorce. Half of zero is zero!"
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