Re: Hardware failure may cost TD Canada Trust customers, analyst says
Man, you people are brutal. TD Canada Trust has one bad day, and you bite their heads off.
It’s true, we now expect access to our money the same way we expect to turn on a light, a tap, get a dial tone, buy gasoline. But guess what? Those utilities probably fail more often than banking systems. Listen to what you said: “Technical problems affected CIBC customers in the early 1990s when the system was down for more than a day and the Bank of Montreal experienced a problem three years ago when MasterCard service was interrupted.” The CIBC failure was so far back you can’t remember the year and Bank of Montreal had “a” problem three years ago. To me, that’s nothing to complain about.
On that Saturday, I happened to be making the largest POS purchase I had ever made (that big screen TV I had been dreaming about for years) when my bank balked at making the transaction. My face turned red. Did I forget my PIN number? Did I not have enough money? System Error? So what did I do? Well like all good computing professionals, I had backup. I reached into my wallet and pull out a trusty cheque. You remember those don’t you?
Anyway, a few years ago, I was renewing my subscription to Computing Canada. I got all the way through your rather longish form and hit the submit button.
Well guess what? Some nonsensical ASP message comes out. I had to re-type everything only to have it fail again. I tried the next day and it was fine. Did I want to never subscribe again? Did I vow to switch magazines? No. Shit happens. If your going to make a big deal, make it every time with every company. Did you ask Gomez who has the best online and in-branch service? You could balance your views.
Harry Cowan
Connex Search
Don’t the major banks run two parallel systems so that if one fails the other takes over? The Airline reservation systems always did that in the ’70s and ’80s. Is TD bank complacently running the risk of total failure with one system, believing that hardware is “hard” and can’t break as opposed to the softness of software?
John Knops
Insurance and Risk Management Officer
Government of Yukon
Re: Canada’s piracy rate sees first decline in four years
Hi, I just read your story, entitled “Canada’s piracy rate sees first decline in four years.” In this it states that software piracy has dropped in 11 of Canada’s 12 provinces and territories. As you ought to be aware, Canada has 13 provinces and territories.
Rupert Brooks
Map Generalisation Specialist
GeoAccess Division CCRS
Natural Resources Canada
ITBusiness.ca regrets this error. It has since been corrected.
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