Intersango Withdrawals

[phantomnecro]

I've had a withdrawal request in with Intersango now for 7 days and I was wondering if anyone had anything out of them in the last week or so. Had some previous withdrawals with them fine to a UK bank account but this last one seems to be taking a long time, they have previously been pretty swift with the withdrawal requests... Raised a support request with them too and no response from them yet?

So I thought I'd see if anyone else who uses them has had this issue in the last week...

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[rjk]

I've had a withdrawal request in with Intersango now for 7 days and I was wondering if anyone had anything out of them in the last week or so. Had some previous withdrawals with them fine to a UK bank account but this last one seems to be taking a long time, they have previously been pretty swift with the withdrawal requests... Raised a support request with them too and no response from them yet?

So I thought I'd see if anyone else who uses them has had this issue in the last week...

Probably flooded with requests following the Bitcoinica debacle.

[phantomnecro]

Hmm.. Figures...

[locust]

Transfers received through Metro Bank since 22/05 18:00 are delayed.

So, 7 days for you...?

[phantomcircuit]

Online banking with metro is currently unavailable.

There has not been an increase in withdrawal requests.

[rjk]

There has not been an increase in withdrawal requests.

Requests wasn't the right word. I meant general workload, dealing with it. But it's interesting that you address the point, anyway.

[Otoh]

May 24, 2012, 5:22 p.m.

Well over 24 hours ago I requested this withdrawal & it still has not been sent:
Withdraw #xxxxx

Requested withdrawal of xxxx.xx GBP to

Beneficiary Name
xxxx
Sort Code
xxxxxx
Account Number
xxxxxxxx

This happens every single time & I had thought that you would have sorted this out by now & process these several times a day as you claim to do for deposits but it seems not, kindly have my funds sent today & put some indication on your withdrawals page of how long you will take to possess such a simple thing when it isn't same day. Last time I actually had to cancel & buy bitcoins to get my funds out at a loss, but this time I need my GBP returned urgently before the weekend, by faster tx it's in under 2 hours so please do this now.

May 24, 2012, 11:04 p.m. Donald

Hi,

Unfortunately we are having some slight banking issues. Our bank is undergoing development on its online platform which has temporarily limited our access.

We had a very similar incident two months ago which was resolved in a timely manner.

We are sorry for the delays.

Sincerely,
Team Intersango

May 24, 2012, 11:29 p.m.

Hi,

Thanks for the response, I do though still need to know what you consider 'was resolved in a timely manner.' is this hours, days, or longer? As my message stated I do need to know if these funds will be sent before the weekend, you can actually do this in person at your bank tomorrow - please just let me know as otherwise I may need to buy bitcoins at a loss, move them to Gox, sell them in $ & wire them from Japan to my GBP account at even more loss.

Thanks,
Otoh

[miernik]

Online banking with metro is currently unavailable.

These URL's seem up for me:

https://corporate.metrobankonline.co.uk/

https://retail.metrobankonline.co.uk/

P.S. is anyone in charge of this URL: https://support.intersango.com/status

It now happily says:

Metro Bank (UK)    Transactions imported every half hour.    Payments sent daily.

If this "status" page shows false information, just take it down until there is someone in charge of updating it.

[miernik]

otherwise I may need to buy bitcoins at a loss, move them to Gox, sell them in $ & wire them from Japan to my GBP account at even more loss.

It'd be more cost effective to sell them in Intersango EUR market and make a SEPA withdrawal - you can send that to UK, just in EUR, which'll get converted to GBP by your bank (at a probably unfavorable rate, much worse then you'd get at TransferWise.com or CurrencyFair.com).

Another way to sell Bitcoins to GBP is here: https://bitmarket.eu/market/GBP

There is not much trade, but if you post an offer, write about it here on the forum, and someone may come and buy some. Even I may buy some, however I am only interested in paying about 3.10 GBP/BTC, I can send a transfer to UK.

[Otoh]

thanks for the tips, but at a 4 figure sum I doubt that Intersango Euro market would be at all competitive for a one day sale, at least I know with Gox $s that I will get the best spot rate for quantities, as for buying at up to £3.40 currently on Intersango & selling for £3.10 thanks, but no thanks - I'll pass

[phantomcircuit]

These URL's seem up for me:

https://corporate.metrobankonline.co.uk/

https://retail.metrobankonline.co.uk/

Everything looks fine until you actually try to login, one of the pages simply infinite loops.

P.S. is anyone in charge of this URL: https://support.intersango.com/status

It now happily says:

Metro Bank (UK)    Transactions imported every half hour.    Payments sent daily.

If this "status" page shows false information, just take it down until there is someone in charge of updating it.

I've updated that page.

[phantomnecro]

Everything looks fine until you actually try to login, one of the pages simply infinite loops.

Funny Metro Bank have one of their major sales pitches they are more available than other banks, longer hours, branches open weekends and Internet Banking and yet their Online site is stuffed up for a week.. I assume they know about this and have given some reason why?

Oh and I hope they don't force you to have that Trusteer Rapport installed to access their online banking, it has to be the worst piece of crap security software ever.. You want to have a laugh watch this.. http://youtu.be/EimZQgt7WPg Takedown of it at a security conference last year..

[miernik]

Funny Metro Bank have one of their major sales pitches they are more available than other banks, longer hours, branches open weekends and Internet Banking and yet their Online site is stuffed up for a week.. I assume they know about this and have given some reason why?

I don't see their online banking being down, there would be a message here: https://corporate.metrobankonline.co.uk/

@phantomcircuit: if there is something else going on, like they locked your account because of something, then just tell us the truth, so people stop sending money to the account, and not let us believe "Online banking is down", when I see it isn't. They would have put a message on their login page, wouldn't they?

I'm sorry for not fully believing, but if we put our money in there, we need to know exactly what's going on. I don't believe a major bank has online banking down for more then a few hours - they'd be out of business soon. Does it make headlines of newspapers in UK already that Metro online banking is down so long? In Poland it would.

[phantomnecro]

I don't see their online banking being down, there would be a message here: https://corporate.metrobankonline.co.uk/

@phantomcircuit: if there is something else going on, like they locked your account because of something, then just tell us the truth, so people stop sending money to the account, and not let us believe "Online banking is down", when I see it isn't. They would have put a message on their login page, wouldn't they?

I'm sorry for not fully believing, but if we put our money in there, we need to know exactly what's going on. I don't believe a major bank has online banking down for more then a few hours - they'd be out of business soon. Does it make headlines of newspapers in UK already that Metro online banking is down so long? In Poland it would.

Metro Bank are a very small player in the UK, they have only been around maybe 3 or 4 years at most I think and have just 12 physical branches in the entire country, for instance compare that to Barclays who have over 1600 in the UK. Plus we've better things for the news here, the impending collapse of the Euro is center stage.

[genjix]

@phantomcircuit: if there is something else going on, like they locked your account because of something, then just tell us the truth, so people stop sending money to the account, and not let us believe "Online banking is down", when I see it isn't. They would have put a message on their login page, wouldn't they?

If that's the case then they have not told us. We had a similar problem before where they thought our issue was that we weren't using Internet Explorer/hadn't cleared our cookies. It later turned out to be a problem on their end and I had to visit a branch to reset the details.

We were assured today that it should be fixed before the weekend (when the technical team is unavailable). We had to send them screenshots of the error. I attached a screenshot below. It seems like another run of the mill error (page fails to load).

Compared to other banks, they are far better. HSBC and Lloyds had constant problems all the time. We would be constantly calling in to move them to fix their technical problems. We are not the normal customer as we have hundreds of transactions a day.

[miernik]

Compared to other banks, they are far better. HSBC and Lloyds had constant problems all the time. We would be constantly calling in to move them to fix their technical problems. We are not the normal customer as we have hundreds of transactions a day.

Thanks. And something like this can be for days and there is no general outrage in the whole country?

In Poland if online banking of any bank is unexpectedly down for more then a few hours, or unannounced earlier on the bank's website as a scheduled maintenance, then the bank gets so much heat from customers that they get their technical team working ASAP, and things like being down for more then 24 hours are unheard of! BZWBK sometimes gets down also, but I don't ever remember it taking more then a day, and rarely more then a few hours, and if it was more then 24 hours the bank would lose hundreds of outraged customers.

I remember one situation when Bank Zachodni WBK was down and not fixed until the next day. It was a exception, there where articles in nationwide newspapers about it and outrage on web forums was tremendous.

Hundreds transactions a day? That's nothing. Thousands of companies have more, and some MANY more. What about utility companies, they'll have a hundred thousand transactions a day on their account. Any medium sized webshop in Poland has hundreds or thousands of transactions a day in their bank account.

And there in UK, if banks go down so often, how do people do business anyway? After such things a company loses a large chunk of their customers (if they have competition). If a webshop has orders delayed for more then a day, their phone lines are ringing hot and some customers start preparing to go to the police.

[yogi]

Online banking with metro is currently unavailable.

There has not been an increase in withdrawal requests.

Any idea when it will be fixed?

[phantomcircuit]

Compared to other banks, they are far better. HSBC and Lloyds had constant problems all the time. We would be constantly calling in to move them to fix their technical problems. We are not the normal customer as we have hundreds of transactions a day.

Thanks. And something like this can be for days and there is no general outrage in the whole country?

In Poland if online banking of any bank is unexpectedly down for more then a few hours, or unannounced earlier on the bank's website as a scheduled maintenance, then the bank gets so much heat from customers that they get their technical team working ASAP, and things like being down for more then 24 hours are unheard of! BZWBK sometimes gets down also, but I don't ever remember it taking more then a day, and rarely more then a few hours, and if it was more then 24 hours the bank would lose hundreds of outraged customers.

I remember one situation when Bank Zachodni WBK was down and not fixed until the next day. It was a exception, there where articles in nationwide newspapers about it and outrage on web forums was tremendous.

Hundreds transactions a day? That's nothing. Thousands of companies have more, and some MANY more. What about utility companies, they'll have a hundred thousand transactions a day on their account. Any medium sized webshop in Poland has hundreds or thousands of transactions a day in their bank account.

And there in UK, if banks go down so often, how do people do business anyway? After such things a company loses a large chunk of their customers (if they have competition). If a webshop has orders delayed for more then a day, their phone lines are ringing hot and some customers start preparing to go to the police.

Banks in Poland are definitely awesome.

That being said very few companies have as many direct bank transactions as we do, typically they either have special deals with the bank (utilities and such) or the transactions are processed by credit card providers and appear in their bank account proper in batches.

[miernik]

Banks in Poland are definitely awesome.

That being said very few companies have as many direct bank transactions as we do, typically they either have special deals with the bank (utilities and such) or the transactions are processed by credit card providers and appear in their bank account proper in batches.

I remember in December last year BZWBK made a competition for customers with a Asus laptop as a prize to the customer who gets the most Alerty24 (e-mail/SMS notifications about transactions in an account) in a month. People started making scripts to make automated transactions to generate those notifications to win a laptop. The winner in December 2011 had 110000 (110 thousand) notifications in a month. The winner in January 2012 about twice as much. Then they cancelled the competition, because they didn't expect people to be making these with automated scripts. But even thou people did, they did honor the winners with a laptop, and nobody's accounts was blocked because of having over two hundred thousand bank transfers in a month (and that on a normal private account). When they cancelled the competition, they gave a free prepaid MasterCard with 100 PLN to everyone who participated in the competition (no matter how many transactions he did) as a "sorry" for cancelling the competition. Although their IT was surprised about the volume of transactions that resulted from this strange competition, they only where calling some users and where "begging" them to stop because the IT systems where overloaded. That's what is Bank Zachodni WBK respect to customers - they where begging them to stop, and only slightly suggesting that their online access might some day stop working if the volume continue to increase, but in the end nobody's online access was blocked, even though the top user had made over 200000 transactions (transfers from one of his account to another).

So how is that compared to the volume you do?

[phantomcircuit]

Banks in Poland are definitely awesome.

That being said very few companies have as many direct bank transactions as we do, typically they either have special deals with the bank (utilities and such) or the transactions are processed by credit card providers and appear in their bank account proper in batches.

I remember in December last year BZWBK made a competition for customers with a Asus laptop as a prize to the customer who gets the most Alerty24 (e-mail/SMS notifications about transactions in an account) in a month. People started making scripts to make automated transactions to generate those notifications to win a laptop. The winner in December 2011 had 110000 (110 thousand) notifications in a month. The winner in January 2012 about twice as much. Then they cancelled the competition, because they didn't expect people to be making these with automated scripts. But even thou people did, they did honor the winners with a laptop, and nobody's accounts was blocked because of having over two hundred thousand bank transfers in a month (and that on a normal private account). When they cancelled the competition, they gave a free prepaid MasterCard with 100 PLN to everyone who participated in the competition (no matter how many transactions he did) as a "sorry" for cancelling the competition. Although their IT was surprised about the volume of transactions that resulted from this strange competition, they only where calling some users and where "begging" them to stop because the IT systems where overloaded. That's what is Bank Zachodni WBK respect to customers - they where begging them to stop, and only slightly suggesting that their online access might some day stop working if the volume continue to increase, but in the end nobody's online access was blocked, even though the top user had made over 200000 transactions (transfers from one of his account to another).

So how is that compared to the volume you do?

It takes BZWBK about 60 seconds to generate the csv file for our account, I know this because I recently had to increase the delay in our script.

That being said BZWBK has far better systems than any of the UK banks.