Cahoot's banking service appears to be fully operational this morning; my account shows an interbank transfer dated 16/10/08 as having gone through.

In all fairness to Cahoot I have been an account holder since November 2002 and this is the the first time I can recall any unscheduled down-time. Over this period they have paid generous rates of interest on both current and savings accounts, and have responded quickly on the few occasions that I needed to email them.

My concern is, as expressed by others in this thread, that the move to Santander will lead to a deterioration in standards of service. I'm going to be forgiving this time, just hoping that this episode is a one-off. What was most disturbing was the bank's failure to communicate with their customers what was going on at the outset, what impact it might have on transactions, and when they expected a normal service to be restored. This was especially galling in the week following the demise of three Icelandic internet banks.

"According to Radio 4 this afternoon, Cahoot have promised to get things working this evening. You can't pay bills with promises though"

Um! Well so much for Cahoot's promises, if indeed they made that claim. When I spoke to them this evening they were still totally non-committal as to when their website would become functional again. IMO I still believe there's a lot more to this then they will ever admit, and that's what scares me.

Currently, the good news is that the login page is back, but the bad news is that logging in is not working properly yet (for me anyway.) Just timeouts at present*

-----------------------------

* Now site is up and running. For all those who have been affected by this, please make sure you write to the Financial Ombudsman and voice your complaints about what has occurred. This whole episode is not nearly acceptable, or excusable. http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/contact/index.html

According to Radio 4 this afternoon, Cahoot have promised to get things working this evening. You can't pay bills with promises though.

I'll repeat my advice to find someone with branches and initiate a transfer of the account from there. I have online banking and branches to visit. There's no reason not to have both unless you are willing to swap account safety and accessability for a higher interest rate from an on-line only bank.

I think it rediculous that something like this can happen.

There was the old bug in the website that allowed people to login in without a password, then there was the move to selecting the letters of the password, which was no longer case sensitive and therefore weakened my security.

I have also noticed less of my messages being acknowledged or answered recently, and also had a cheque canceled by cahoot, with no reason, response, or charge. I have no clue why it was canceled.

Now this!

In this financial climate it doesn't instill confidence. I will not be staying with cahoot any more, and am going to look for another account on the weekend.

Regards,

Kristian

From the description on the Cahoot front page that sounds like a classic 'restoring from backup' situation. They're bringing the accounts back up to the time of the outage, then merging from a second fallback system to date. Once the live database has the merged data available it should re-appear. The sheer volume of info + integrity checks are probably what is taking up the time.

Dave

Thanks Maxsteam. I have just written a letter to the Financial Ombudsman, but knowing them from past experience, they will probably turn a blind eye, and I'll get a fob-off response. The only time they ever seem to act is when a banking story/scandal hits the media and they start getting worried about failing to respond.

Hi mid-devonian,

I've see they've updated the message:

_______________________________________________

sorry, cahoot is unavailable

Dear Customer

We apologise that cahoot.com was unavailable yesterday and today (Wednesday 15 and Thursday 16th October).

The site will shortly be up and running and you will be able to see any transactions you made up until 7.30am yesterday (Wednesday 15 October). Any transactions on your account made after that time will have been actioned but may not display yet so please don’t worry. These should be updated over the next 24 hours. Any payments set up to go yesterday or today should be processed as usual.

Once the site is back online and you access your account today, you will be able to use your account as normal. However, transactions may not display instantly but they will be updated over the next 24 hours. Please bear with us as we bring the website back up and running. We are working as quickly as possible to do this.

Once again, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Cahoot is part of the Santander Group one of the world's most successful and well-capitalised banks with nearly 70 million customers and remains a safe place for your money.

Many thanks

Matthew Timms
Managing Director
cahoot

_____________________________________________________

We're still awaiting a reply, but I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything...

Graeme

Yesterday (15Oct) I got the message you have given above when I tried to login. This morning I have been unable to access the www.cahoot.com homepage, let alone login.

Declan Curry's blog on the BBC Working Lunch has some reassuring words:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/workinglunch/declancurry/

This piece ends with this update:

"Cahoot says its website will be up and running shortly, but some transactions made after 0730 yesterday morning may not appear on online statements for another 24 hours. The transactions have been made, they're just not visible on your statement. We're still waiting for the definitive word on direct debits."

I am also a Cahoot customer and have been trying the site for 2 days, and also noticed that from yesterday to today the .com domain went down as well as the secure site. A power failure is extremely odd. A bank should have bank up generators, indeed, any serious internet provider will have that.

I also need to access my accounts. I called then and they told me that going to Abbey would produce no results as Abbey cannot access Cahoot Accounts.

When they are back up, I am going to think twice about keeping funds at a non-high street internet bank!

Hi,

The log-in page currently says:
________________________________________________________________

cahoot is currently unavailable
cahoot is currently carrying out essential maintenance to improve the service that we provide to our customers.

This will result in our website being unavailable for a short time. Should you have general enquiries during this period please email us on contact.us @ cahoot.com.

If you would like to report a cahoot card as lost or stolen please telephone our Contact Centre on 0870 6000 655.

Please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Thank you for your patience.
___________________________________________________________________

We've spoken to cahoot and it would seem this is down to a power failure which they're attempting to rectify - I'll let you know as soon as we have more news...but I do agree - some sort of notice on their website homepage would be useful - particularly in the current climate!

Now their home website is unavailable.Why is their front website, www.cahoot.com not working at all now, when it still was last night? I managed to get through to Cahoot on a special line.. When I asked the guy on the phone if Cahoot was in trouble he hesitated for a couple of seconds before giving me an answer still claiming it's a power outage. Yet they refused to do a CHAPS for me, something. they've never refused before and has nothing to do with power failure. They've effectively frozen my account,

I can't see anything in the news about Cahoot, but I'm beginning to fear the worst, as for the third day they now they wouldn't confirm when 'the 'power failure' would be fixed. I hope I'm wrong, but at the moment I don't believe them..About to go down to an Abbey branch to see what they know, if anything.

I thought that all banking houses had disaster recovery plans - in my view two days without access to banking is a disaster. What makes it worse is that they have offered no explanation on their front web page as to what is happening - are our accounts safe? what has happened to payments made in and out during this period. Cahoot / Abbey are seemingly going downhill since the takeover by Santandar. Customers are rightly concerned in these times of banking uncertainty

If a bank messes up you can claim for interest but only for the period that they mess up so many don't bother. If, for example, you wanted to transfer money from a current account to a savings account and they took a month to do that, you could claim for a month's interest. You can't usually get anything if their delay causes you inconvenience or other expenses like a late payment penalty.

If you file a tax return over the internet I believe (& hope) that those don't need doing until January.

Hopefully you will get access to your account soon and can move things to a bank or building society that has branches as well. If you want to close the Cahoot account, you should be able to instigate the transfer from a branch of wherever you decide to move to.

Yes, the bank has rules and responsibilities but then so do drivers and most of the time nothing happens if we drive at 71 mph on the motorway. You should visit this site at some point.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

The wonderful internet bank account, Cahoot, has been down for nearly 48 hours now. This means customers such as myself cannot pay any bills including a big one for tax now due. I have telephoned Cahoot, but was told by customer services that while their computer system is down, I cannot pay any bills or transfer my money out. Surely I have a legal right to access my account, whether their computer system works or or not?

Also I wanted to take most of my savings out and transfer to a better paying account, but am currently unable to do so. If the transferee bank meanwhile lowers its interest rate and I lose out because of the delay due to Cahoot, could I succeed in claiming loss of interest (a whole year's worth) as the transferee account is offering a fixed rate bond for a year at much better rates

Does anyone have any sensible suggestions please?

Peter