Some Scotiabank customers still unable to access accounts after 'scheduled maintenance'

Last Friday, Scotiabank's customer service account on X stated that there would be scheduled maintenance starting that day and ending on Tuesday, affecting several credit card and line of credit services. 

But that quickly turned into an outage for many customers, and they flocked to social media to report that they were unable to even view their accounts online or send e-Transfers. 

And, a day after maintenance was supposed to have been completed, customers were still experiencing outages. 

The bank acknowledged in a statement on X on Wednesday afternoon that "some clients are experiencing intermittent access to some banking services."

"Scotiabank is working diligently to restore all functionality as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our clients."

The outage, which comes after Scotiabank suffered a technical issue this summer that disrupted the deposit of customers' paycheques, has resulted in a slew of angry comments online, as well as a proposed class action lawsuit. 

Scotiabank did not directly answer CBC's questions on whether it was aware of more services being down than it had previously stated would be impacted. In a statement, it said point-of-sale transactions had not been affected.

'Doesn't show my card at all'

Yusuf Mahamed, a Scotiabank customer based in North Vancouver, B.C., said that he first noticed the issue Tuesday morning, when he tried to access his online banking and found he couldn't send an e-Transfer to his wife.

"My entire online banking suite was not working," he told CBC News. It still hadn't been fixed as of Wednesday evening. "It doesn't show my credit card at all."

He said he hadn't received any communication from Scotiabank beforehand letting him know about the maintenance.

Downdetector, a third-party outage tracker, found that more than 1,500 people were reporting an outage at the peak on Wednesday morning, compared to the usual baseline of six reports. 

Scotiabank's initial tweet on Nov. 8 linked to a post on its website, which warned that access to some services would be unavailable from Nov. 8 to 12, including requesting a supplementary card or a credit limit increase, and setting up or cancelling auto payments. They would be unavailable across "all channels," the post stated — meaning online, on the Scotiabank app, over the phone or in person. 

But the issues reported by customers ranged beyond those outlined. While effects were temporary for some, according to comments on Scotiabank's X account, others are still unable to access their funds.  

The central complainant of a proposed class action lawsuit filed Wednesday morning was shocked when she was unable to log into her Scotiabank business account on Nov. 12, according to attorney Joey Zurkan, of Montreal-based law firm LPC Avocats. 

"She sees 'unavailable', can't see any balances," he said, adding that she confirmed on Wednesday that she was still locked out. She pays roughly $20 to $100 a month for the account, depending on the number of transactions she does. 

The proposed class action, which has not yet been certified, is seeking fixed damages of $100 for every Scotiabank customer affected by the outage. 

"Some people have more financial harm than others because they'll have bills that are paid late [or] bills that are just unpaid," Zurkan said, adding that it was "unacceptable" for customers to be unable to access their accounts for days. 

Legacy systems causing problems

"Many Canadians are not aware that the big banks are typically on antiquated legacy systems," Daniel Tsai, an adjunct professor of business and law at Toronto Metropolitan University, told CBC News.

That's making service outages more frequent, he said. 

When working with systems still based on much older programming languages, "maintenance" is less like sweeping the floor, Tsai said, and more like trying to fix something on a Ford Model T from the '20s.

"These legacy systems' software can be finicky, and clearly the victims of that are the banking customers who have to deal with the complications of malfunctions."

Earlier this year, BMO's online banking services were also interrupted when a false fire alarm went off at a data centre. Meanwhile, last year at TD Bank, data processing issues caused a day-long direct deposit outage. 

For Scotiabank's part, its Customer Complaints Appeals Office appears to have seen an uptick in activity in recent years. In 2023, it completed about 2,200 cases compared to around 1,300 in 2022, according to the office's fiscal 2023 annual report. 

Tsai called it "curious" that Scotiabank had scheduled maintenance that extended into Tuesday. Banks generally do their maintenance updates over the weekend when they're usually closed, or late at night to minimize disruptions. 

Scotiabank customers who are wrongly slapped with fees due to the outage — like levies for a payment failing to go through — will be able to challenge them. 

But the inconvenience is a problem, Tsai says. 

Mahamed added that the experience has made him "less likely to want to stay with Scotiabank."

If these types of outages continue becoming more frequent, banks may be pushed to actually make large-scale changes to their systems, he said. But for them to start the costly, time-consuming process, it could take more pressure. 

"I think it's time maybe for the federal government and the regulators to treat this more seriously and have banks figure out a plan that they're transparent about in terms of upgrading their systems."