Category Archives: Technical Glitches

the Guardian – January 16, 2018 ISSUE: Shops, football stadiums and taxis unable to take payments from frustrated customers IMPACT: “Seeing as I have to take card payments by law as a London cabbie, your system failure means I can’t work…” IMPACT: supermarkets such as Waitrose IMPACT: Reading Football Club… could not take any card payments […]

Evening Standard – January 15, 2018 ISSUE: repeatedly subjected bus passengers to wrongly-timed safety announcements IMPACT: “please hold on, the bus is about to move”… once the bus has already started moving IMPACT: irked travellers have dubbed them “insanely annoying” and “condescending nonsense” ROOT CAUSE: the announcements are based on an average time that a bus […]

the Guardian – January 16, 2018 IMPACT: A false alarm warning Hawaiians of an incoming ballistic missile on Saturday ROOT CAUSE: badly designed user interface ROOT CAUSE: employer pressed button labelled ‘missile alert’, instead of the one next to it marked ‘test missile alert’ COMPANY RESPONSE: added a “cancellation button”… HEMA has also added a requirement for […]

Bloomberg – December 21, 2017 PREVENTION: [working to prevent] Computers crashing, investors frozen out of markets and a heightened risk of fat finger mistakes PREVENTION: Banks and asset managers have spent years preparing for the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive ROOT CAUSE: there has been so much late breaking news on MiFID II that everyone is […]

Calgary Herald – Nov 29, 2017 ROOT CAUSE: a routine systems upgrade took place Sunday evening… that interfered with data processing IMPACT: which resulted in a system outage and prompted the province to take the unusual step of closing its Calgary and Edmonton land titles offices on Tuesday COMPANY RESPONSE: “Support teams are currently working to […]

Romania-Insider.com – Nov 30, 2017 IMPACT: dozens of Romanians had their accounts or posts temporarily blocked after posting or sharing comments related to the anti-government protests ROOT CAUSE: “A number of pages were temporarily blocked due to an error in our automated systems. COMPANY RESPONSE: “As soon as this was brought to our attention we disabled […]

Romania Insider – November 30, 2017 IMPACT: dozens of Romanians had their accounts or posts temporarily blocked after posting or sharing comments related to the anti-government protests ROOT CAUSE: “A number of pages were temporarily blocked due to an error in our automated systems. COMPANY RESPONSE: “As soon as this was brought to our attention […]

Digital Trends – November 25, 2017 AFFECTED: Macy’s had significant trouble processing credit cards and gift cards [on] .. the busiest shopping day in the U.S AFFECTED: Macy’s stores across the country were suffering the same outages IMPACT: frustrated customers and some lost revenue IMPACT: caused some transactions to take longer to process ROOT CAUSE: […]

AM NY – November 14, 2017 IMPACT: More than a half million parking tickets — totaling about $26 million — have been either refunded or dismissed by the city ROOT CAUSE: a technical error

Malaysian Digest – November 16, 2017 IMPACT: collision between two Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) trains that resulted in 28 people being injured ROOT CAUSE: a software problem on one of the trains ROOT CAUSE: a faulty signalling system … had inadvertently removed a software protection feature on the first of two trains… giving off a […]