Embarassing FNB bug: account balances often show zero

[pnagel]

Here's a bug I reported to FNB multiple times over a year ago: every so often the last entry in the account transaction history shows a running balance of zero:



Needless to say, the first time I reported this bug was in the form of a panicked call to their fraud department, saying "Help! Someone has emptied out my account!"

I've been developing financial software for about 20 years now, and if this kind of thing had happened to us, we would have hung our heads in shame and our managers would have been very antsy for us to fix it ASAP, because it is just not acceptable to give someone the false impression if that their assets have just been wiped out.

I guess what's going on here is that their website calculates all running balances itself, except the last one, for which it gets the actual final number from some other system. When that system is down, the error handler falls back to showing zero. But it would have been way, way better to show the client a final balance of "???" instead.

This is from the "Transaction History" section of their online banking website, an area I spend a lot of time in because I frequently reconcile my account with my personal finance app.

 

[Inn3rs3lf]

The bug I encounter is that it shows R0.00 a day after payday.

 

[neoprema]

Here's a bug I reported to FNB multiple times over a year ago: every so often the last entry in the account transaction history shows a running balance of zero:

View attachment 1002720

Needless to say, the first time I reported this bug was in the form of a panicked call to their fraud department, saying "Help! Someone has emptied out my account!"

I've been developing financial software for about 20 years now, and if this kind of thing had happened to us, we would have hung our heads in shame and our managers would have been very antsy for us to fix it ASAP, because it is just not acceptable to give someone the false impression if that their assets have just been wiped out.

I guess what's going on here is that their website calculates all running balances itself, except the last one, for which it gets the actual final number from some other system. When that system is down, the error handler falls back to showing zero. But it would have been way, way better to show the client a final balance of "???" instead.

This is from the "Transaction History" section of their online banking website, an area I spend a lot of time in because I frequently reconcile my account with my personal finance app.

its not a bug it means you ran out of money. Welcome to the club

 

[pnagel]

The bug I encounter is that it shows R0.00 a day after payday.

And what was your reaction the first time you saw that?

Based on my experience, it might be that the bug manifests if you get money from any source whatsoever. In my example, it happened when I got a rebate from SARS.

If that's true, then people who use an FNB account to run a small business will have some issues with their online transaction history.

 

[Inn3rs3lf]

And what was your reaction the first time you saw that?

Based on my experience, it might be that the bug manifests if you get money from any source whatsoever. In my example, it happened when I got a rebate from SARS.

If that's true, then people who use an FNB account to run a small business will have some issues with their online transaction history.

I think it was more to do with me spending my salary in a day to be honest...but I will always blame FNB, it's the right thing to do.

 

[Wakandafication]

its not a bug it means you ran out of money. Welcome to the club

Do you get ebucks in this club? How do I apply?

 

[John_Phoenix]

Here's a bug I reported to FNB multiple times over a year ago: every so often the last entry in the account transaction history shows a running balance of zero:

View attachment 1002720

Needless to say, the first time I reported this bug was in the form of a panicked call to their fraud department, saying "Help! Someone has emptied out my account!"

I've been developing financial software for about 20 years now, and if this kind of thing had happened to us, we would have hung our heads in shame and our managers would have been very antsy for us to fix it ASAP, because it is just not acceptable to give someone the false impression if that their assets have just been wiped out.

I guess what's going on here is that their website calculates all running balances itself, except the last one, for which it gets the actual final number from some other system. When that system is down, the error handler falls back to showing zero. But it would have been way, way better to show the client a final balance of "???" instead.

This is from the "Transaction History" section of their online banking website, an area I spend a lot of time in because I frequently reconcile my account with my personal finance app.

This is NOT how you ux, ui or anything in between... If the can't handle state / store and req /res properly, they have no business running any client facing software.

It's really not that hard...

Just fall back to manual calc (if possible + accurate) or tell the user there is an error... It's far better than just returning 0

Oh, and don't waste your time reporting it to their snooze centre, those phone jockeys are probably

A) Patting the top of their heads to put out the fire.

B) Laughing at you, when the call gets dropped, or you get transferred. Because you know, there is a zero on screen.

C) the technical department is actually a clown car. They do "IT" not programming. They read from a script, no deviation.