Customer Fury As Ulster Bank IT Problems Enter Fourth Week

Three weeks after an IT glitch at its parent company Royal Bank of Scotland, the backlog of interrupted transactions has still not been cleared at Ulster Bank.

Furious customers have been forced to join lengthy queues at bank branches to access their money, with salaries and welfare payments paid directly into their accounts failing to update.

Ulster Bank has apologized and pledged to ensure nobody is out of pocket as a result of their IT problems.

It has also promised to pay compensation to affected customers.

"We expect that the week commencing 9 July will be the final week of any significant delays for our customers," the bank said in a statement late on Sunday.

"We expect gradual, but significant and noticeable, improvements throughout the remainder of this week.

"It is our expectation that by the week beginning 16 July the vast majority of customers will return to a normal service."

During a systems upgrade at Royal Bank of Scotland, an error occurred.

It meant that up to 20 million transactions which would normally have been processed in batches overnight failed to go through.

Once the problem was identified and fixed, the backlog of unprocessed transactions were then put through.

But because of the way the automated system was set up, customers at RBS and Nat West banks in the UK had their problems sorted within days.

However for Irish customers of Ulster Bank, the issues have still not been deal with.

As a result, money which is paid directly into Ulster Bank accounts did not show up on balances, causing a major problem for people who wanted to access the cash.

Ulster Bank promised to pay out to customers who showed up at branches with their pay-slips confirming the money had been paid.