Rude Awakenings!
What was a bright, early, and pleasant morning for us was rudely interrupted by pretty startling posts by our friends on Facebook. You’ve no doubt heard about it by now but, in case you haven’t, it seems like a lot of people who bank with the Bank of the Philippines Islands (BPI) are reporting an alarming amount of money missing from their accounts; some even going into the negatives.
BPI has already issued a statement on their official statement saying:
Due to an internal data processing error, some clients may have seen their accounts debited twice or credited twice for a past transaction. We are currently correcting the mispostings.
We apologize for the inconvenience that this may have caused.
In their statement, BPI claims that clients may have been debited twice or credited twice for a past transaction, but some of the complaints we’ve been seeing are from our friends and colleagues who haven’t touched their accounts in months. We’re even seeing reports that some account holders have received a massive influx of money.
As of right now, we have no idea what the root cause of the problem is or if it’s limited to their online portal. We have checked our accounts at the nearby BPI branch via the ATM and everything is accounted for on our end. If you’re a BPI account holder, we advise that you do the same. It’s pretty hard to log on to their online banking system already, whether through their website or their app.
We’ll keep track of this story and let you guys know if there are any developments.
UPDATE:
BPI has managed to trace the root of the problem to an internal system error that caused some transactions occurring between April 27 and May 2 to be double-posted as of June 6. The company reports that efforts to resolve the issue is progressing well, and all BPI branches are open and taking in customers. As a precautionary measure and to speed up the resolution process, BPI has temporarily disabled electronic banking channels including ATMs and online banking.