Commonwealth Bank forced to refund millions of customers
Commonwealth Bank customers have had their legitimate account balance restored after an outage led to unexpected repeat transactions.
The bank apologized after a number of customer payments were unexpectedly repeated on Saturday morning, reportedly leaving a number of accounts overdrawn.
The number of people affected and the reason behind the problem have not been made public.
The bank said it had completed the process to reverse duplicate transactions and resolved other issues with the app before 5:30pm AEDT.
“We apologize for the inconvenience,” the company said.
“Thank you for being patient with us.
‘Rest assured that all fees charged will be refunded.
‘Customers do not need to contact us for this.’
Commonwealth Bank customers have had their legitimate account balance restored after an outage led to unexpected repeat transactions.
An earlier statement about the outage that the bank posted on social media led to complaints from customers.
Some shared concerns that their accounts were overdrawn.
One irate customer branded the bank a ‘disgrace’ over the issue.
“Me and my partner are now stuck in Queensland and can’t get to the airport because our cards have been redacted,” they said.
‘We’re going to miss our flights! We can’t get an Uber home even if we have to go to the airport!’
Another asked: ‘Why did CommBank just debit my account for all the payments I made this week?’
Others claimed they would ditch the bank altogether.
“As soon as I get my money back, I will switch to another bank,” they said.
“This goes beyond just a simple apology.”
Another said their family was stranded because their account was overdrawn.
“You overdrew my account, leaving me and my family stranded this weekend. I want answers,” they said.
The latest incident came after the bank apologized on Thursday and agreed to pay $7.5 million after sending 170 million emails that breached Australia’s anti-spam laws.
The marketing messages sent to CBA customers between November 2022 and April 2024 breach the Spam Act 2003 because they did not include a way to unsubscribe, the Australian Communications and Media Authority said.
A total of 34 million messages were sent to people who had not consented or had withdrawn their consent to receive such messages, the authority said.