Simple ATM cards being declined

I don't have anything to do with 'simple' but I'm working with a group of people on another system somewhere in the payment chain. In banking failure is not an option, a little detail that I keep having to drill into my collegues, some of who would rather have an MVP with the occasional bit of downtime than something a lot more solid. So for now we're stuck in the 'hurd' loop.<p>Within any start-up there are always differing opinions on the level of reliability required. My first real job in IT was with the Dutch division of the Chase Mannhattan bank, they made it pretty clear upon hiring me that they did not mind hiring me into a responsible position as young as I was but that my first fuck-up would also be my last. I'm not sure if they would actually follow through on that promise but it certainly made me a bit more wary and more responsible. The fact that I ended up leaving of my own accord means that their threat probably had its intended effect.<p>When you're in the payment chain, whether as an IPSP, a bank or something else that directly affects peoples income and ability to function in society you have no excuse other than 'meteor fragments took out all three of our datacenters'.<p>Stuff is up, check-totals are at '0', transactions are never lost. 24 hours, 365 (of 366) days per year.<p>If you can't do that don't bother playing.<p>The bank I'm with (Rabobank in nl) lost a lot of respect from me (after building that up for 2 decades) when they blamed a bunch of down time on 'hackers'. What bugged me even more than the fact that they were down was the fact that they wanted to blame another party for being down.<p>The one thing I'll leave a little bit of room for is capacity issues during the holiday shopping spree, but even that is pretty bad form and indicative of very bad planning.<p>Judging by the post the error lies with Simple's partner, unfortunately for Simple customers will likely not care about that at all. To them their simple card doesn't work when they expect it to work.<p>I hope for simple they'll be able to fix this very quickly.

Simple has earned such goodwill with me for their amazing customer service, zero fees (even for overdrafts), and overall customer experience that I'm happy to give them a pass on this.<p>The fact that they're being proactive about their status updates, and transparently honest, helps a lot, too.<p>A relationship with a bank is a lot like a relationship with a doctor: bedside manner is sometimes the most important element to patient (customer) satisfaction - sometimes even surpassing outcomes, as long as it's not too serious.

Sibling threads touting banks as paragons of reliability, with any momentary loss-of-access-to-funds as unforgivable, must have been dealing with a different banking system than me.<p>With major banks like BofA, Citibank, and others, I've had…<p>• credit cards often disabled for fraud-alert false alarms<p>• check deposits sometimes subject to mysterious fund-availability delays<p>• individual ATM clusters or whole ATM networks down for short periods<p>• account information and ATM withdrawals sometimes unavailable during 'system maintenance' hours (often early Sunday AM)<p>• a check erroneously bounced by a major bank (BofA) when <i>both</i> available-by-rule funds and enrolled 'overdraft protection' would have each been individually able to cover the check amount<p>• my ATM card unusable while traveling to the exotic third-world locale of Ottawa, Canada due to some sort of more-than-one-day network security issue<p>Stuff happens, to banks also. Cut Simple some slack.

It looks like this started around Jan 1 00:00:00 UTC 2013.<p>I wonder if it's related to the leap second bug discovered in July. Apparently, a some popular NTP servers incorrectly sent out leap seconds at midnight. Even if it's not that specific issue, I bet the root cause is a time-keeping bug.

Ordinarily I might consider this worth a loss in reputation, but given the uniquely one-sided battle that is trying to cause any disruption in the banking industry, I'd be willing to cut these guys some slack. In this area the enemy has big guns

Uhh. This is quite catastrophic actually. Not being able to access your funds at all really blows.

I was hit with this, but like I'd imagine every other simple user just pulled out a credit card. I figured it was some issue with Subway's card reader on University, guess it wasn't.

All news is good news? I had never heard of Simple before this and am now semi-interested in getting a card..

It looks like they are trying to do good, however Banking is not like Google or Amazon cloud. Whilst the odd downtime happens with these technology companies, people forgive and move on, but banking really is different.<p>If my bank went down losing access to my money, I would be naked, I don't always have cash and money is our oxygen is this society, a absolute essential. Hopefully the downtime for Simple will be short, but if they had 100 million people using them as their main bank and this happened, you could expect mass exodus the next day.<p>The only time I have lost access to my money was a few years ago when VISA or MASTERCARD went down (or both), with them you don't have a choice and everyone lost access to their money, but if ever just one bank went down it wouldn't turn out good at all.

I have six invites for any adventurous HNers interested in living life on the edge.

I'm just curious: who is their transaction partner?

This actually bit me last night. It was a little bit embarrassing, but it all worked out in the end.

They're back up.