‘Ghost mode’: Major bank hit by outage

Customers at a major Australian bank have reported being locked out of the website and app for hours, with staff “urgently” working to resolve the issue.

Almost 1300 people reported issues accessing ING Australia banking services by midday on Wednesday, according to website Down Detector.

In a statement, ING said it was “aware that some customers are experiencing issues accessing the ING website and app”.

“The issue has been identified and our team are making progress in resolving the disruption,” a spokesperson said.

“We sincerely apologise to any customers who may be impacted.”

Customers took to social media to vent frustration at the outage that left them unable to access the ING Australia website and app.

“Hope things are fixed fast, I need to put fuel in (my) car so I can work this afternoon but can’t pay for it until I can transfer funds between my ING accounts,” one user said.

Another said: “Just arrived at my holiday destination to find i don’t have access to my money. Again. Thanks ING”.

Other users voiced anger at what they said was a lack of communication by the bank which first issued a statement hours after first reports on outage.

“I can’t get on the app or website either. It’s gone ghost mode,” a customer said.

Another user said the “genuine thing to do would be update customers on the fact your banking app appears to have stopped working”

“Seems that you should be approaching this with a similar urgency as your customers have to know what’s going on,” they said.

“Any feedback on your app and website being down would be handy…… when your ready. All good, just got bills to pay,” another user said.

“It’s only taken your company 4.5hrs to let us know. Cheers for the heads up. Can’t expect much better from ING I guess….. time to switch to a real bank I guess.”

Another customer said on Facebook there was a “systemic issue for users trying to access the app and website”.

“The phone recording tells me to go into either of those to contact someone to report an issue,” they said.

“Trying to call and the options available to try and talk to someone, are incredibly vague.

“Will definitely be changing banks.”

Outages were first reported to DownDetector about 9am, before dipping slightly and spiking again about midday.

Many user first complained of issues in the late-morning and some had reported the issues had been resolved for them later.