Anyone trying to login to their Bank of America account online has
been struggling to do so since Friday. The nation's biggest bank says
its issues are
not related to any attack on the website but
won't say exactly what's been causing
the trouble. "Right now, everything is
fine," says a Bank of America spokesperson. Sure online
banking is
sometimes
prone to
service
outages but BofA first time
dealing with
such problems. Back in March, BofA's online banking system was been
down for over 24 hours in some states. And two months before that the
site was down for about a day with the bank saying that the problems
were not because of malware and that
customer information was not compromised. All three of those outages
took place on pay-day for alot of folks.
The March outage was on the first of the month, the January
outage on the 14th (a Friday) and last week's outage was also
around the first of the month on Friday. BofA would not say how
many folks were affected in any of those incidents but the most
recent outage is by far the longest disruption to its online banking
system. Making the timing of the outages even stranger is that BofA's
most recent weekend outage started a day after the bank said it
would start charging consumers a $5 monthly fee for debit card
use. The fee, of course, hasn't been received kindly with many
consumers threatening to take their deposits elsewhere. And after
the outage in January rumors swirled that about the possibility of the
website being hacked by WikiLeaks' advocates
"Anonymous." Today, President Obama got in on the debit card fee argument
telling ABC's George Stephanopoulos that that it was "not good
business practice." From ABC: Responding to a question about
Bank of America's recent decision to charge users a $5 fee for
using a debit card, Obama said government should get involved
and that he had worked to stop banks from charging hidden credit
card fees. Read: BofA's New $5 Debit Card Fee? Blame Dodd-Frank The
online banking system isn't the bank's only problem
lately. BofA's share price tanked nearly 10% today closing at
$5.53. That's the first time BAC shares have dropped under $6
since March 2009–not a pretty month for the markets. Shares of
the bank are down 24% for the last month and 59% year to date Its
universal banking rival Citigroup also took a beating with shares down
9.8% to $23.11. Meanwhile JPMorgan Chase shares slid nearly 5% to
close at $28.65. The Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF
(NYSE: XLF) fell 4.5% today. Last month, credit rating agency Moody's
cut BofA's long-term senior debt and short-term debt based on the
decrease in probability that the US government will step in and help
the bank
if things got worse. Moody's also downgraded Wells Fargo and
Citi–Wells saw its supported long-term senior debt rating fall to A2
from A1 while Citi's short-term rating was dropped to to Prime-2
from Prime-1. BofA's long-term credit rating was downgraded to
Baa1 from A2 and its short-term rating to P-2 from P-1.