Piecing together various reports, we are pegging the start of this outage was between 4 and 6 pm PT (7 and 9 pm ET) yesterday. That means the outage is now 19-21 hours old. It is likely that this outage was preceded by periodic problems for as many as 48 hours before the full-scale outage started.
Chase ran “down due to scheduled maintenance” message until 12:30 am PT/3:30 am ET this morning and then changed to a “temporarily unavailable” message which they are still running.
So far we’ve only seen two reports of statements by Chase, one by spokesman Tom Kelly:
The problem began overnight, and the company is working to fix it
bank spokesman Thomas Kelly couldn’t specify the exact time service was disrupted.
This statement appears to be somewhat misleading as many reports put the start of the outage earlier than “overnight.” In another report:
Bank spokesman Thomas Kelly couldn’t specify the exact time service was disrupted.
It seems possible that Chase may not have a good handle on when the problem started.
In another comment CEO Jamie Dimon apologized for the outage. Chase has made no other official statements about the cause or duration of the outage that we have seen.
We’ve seen various reports from people who say they have talked to customer service reps that claimed the site would be back up as soon as 30 minutes (at 10 am PT/1 pm ET) which it obviously hasn’t, to 3 hours (11:30 PT/2:30 ET). I think it is safe to say that Chase may themselves not have a good idea of how long this problem will take to resolve.
Reports seem to indicate that branch operations, ATM’s and telephone banking are all functioning properly, although phone banking has a considerable wait. By some reports branch traffic is light. There have been no reports on whether online transactions such as money transfers or bill payments are functioning.
That is all the information we’ve seen so far.
You would think that a 24 hours outage on the second largest bank in the US would elicit a bit more of a response from the mainstream media. So far, I the only large media company that appears to have any information on the Chase bank online outage is Bloomberg.
Included in the sites I have checked for any trace of information (but found none) are the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, Fox Business, San Francisco Chronicle, and USA Today. Checking Google News ought to turn up stories on ANY mainstream media site, but there is nothing.
Update: Now Fox Business is running the story, but it is the same thing Chicago Breaking Business reported hours ago.
Update: Now ABC News is running the story.
Update 1 pm PT/4 pm ET: Ok, now the mainstream media is getting on board. The New York Times, LA Times, and San Francisco Chronicle all are repeating essentially the same story we’ve seen earlier on Chicago Breaking Business and Bloomberg earlier today. So far no one is reporting any more details probably because Chase hasn’t released any.
I Just saw a tweet claiming Chase’s website has been down for three days. While I don’t think it was down for everyone for three days, this might be an indication that they were having sporadic problems days before yesterday’s outage started.
Chase claims, through a spokesman, that their branch and phone banking is operational, although phone banking is experiencing a very long wait. It is unfortunate that they haven’t provided more detailed information on the nature and possible duration of the problems so people can make plans about transactions that might be affected.
Website Chicago Breaking Business reports the following:
The online sites for Chase retail banking and credit card transactions are down due to technical problems, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase & Co. confirmed this morning. The problem began overnight, and the company is working to fix it, said spokesman Tom Kelly.
The bank urges customers to conduct their transactions at a branch or by phone, at 800-935-9935. A recording at that phone number tells callers to expect a long wait to speak with a banker.
In this little bit Chase has communicated about the outage, they are still not telling the truth. It did not begin overnight. It clearly began sometime yesterday morning or afternoon.
Update: 10:30 am PT: A slightly different story has appeared on ABC News and while the story still claims the site has been down since last night, Chase’s spokesman is now quoted as saying:
The service has been down since Monday night, but bank spokesman Thomas Kelly couldn’t specify the exact time service was disrupted.
Does this mean they don’t know when it went down?
Update 9/15/10: A comment on this story suggests that Chase had a scheduled maintenance window on Sunday.
Actually, they did have maintenance scheduled for Sunday Morning. Sunday afternoon and night site worked and crashed Monday evening before 4 pm or so, also noteworthy is that the site crashed last month as well, but made no news splash as the outage was mostly in the weekend. It did captured by a few websites that collect Chase gripes..
In all fairness to Chase, we have to entertain the possibility perhaps the maintenance message was up because of the close proximity to the maintenance window the day before if in fact there was one (you can’t believe everything you read). Or not. It is disturbing to hear that they might have had an outage last month as well.
I’m seeing more reports that put the outage starting earlier than our first reports.
According to this tweet, Chase was down at 7 am PT/10 am ET yesterday and this one puts it at around 2 pm PT/5pm ET yesterday. Our best guesstimate then is that Chase has been down for up to 24 hours.
Update: 9:15 am PT/12:00 pm ET: Just saw a tweet claiming Chase’s website has been down for three days. While I don’t think it was down for everyone for three days, this might be an indication that they were having sporadic problems days before yesterday’s outage started.
I’ve been updating the original post on this story regularly. Here is an update for those of you following on RSS and Twitter.
Chase’s online banking has been down since around 4 pm PT/7pm ET yesterday, 14 hours so far. Originally, they put up a message that they were down for scheduled maintenance but around 12:30 am PT/3:30 ET probably realized that was fairly unbelievable and changed the message on their main page to reflect the more unplanned nature of the outage. We have not received reports yet on whether this is affecting their other banking operations.
Stay tuned.
Chase online appears to be experiencing some unscheduled downtime again, despite what their website says. I just received this from a reader:
9-13-2010 9:45 p.m (central time?)
Online Banking for Chase customers has been disrupted, again, for the second time in as many weeks.
This outage has been ongoing for well over two hours thus far.
No previous mention of this outage was posted on Chase.com’s main page and no e-mail was sent to Chase Online’s customer base informing them of any “scheduled maintenance.”
Interestingly, the notification message at https://chaseonline.chase.com has changed during this outage to try and classify this OUTAGE as “scheduled maintenance.”
Funny, you can only contact Chase’s online customer service by first LOGGING INTO YOUR ACCOUNT. This activity is instantly greeted with the same “This website is temporarily unavailable” page.
I have e-mailed the editors over at The Wall Street Journal. We’ll see if they decide to pick-up this story and run with it or if they let Chase’s flack tell them it was a planned outage for “system maintenance.”
How long will this Outage last? Will this continue into normal business hours tomorrow? How long will Chase customers be inconvenienced this time? Does Chase care? Do Chase’s shareholders care?
Stay tuned…
According to our reader, this started around 6 pm Pacific time on a weekday, a highly unlikely time for a scheduled maintenance. Once again Chase is not giving us the straight story.
Update 11:50 pm. According to comments we’ve received, Chase was down as early as 4 pm, making this about an 8 hour unscheduled outage so far. The image on Chase’s website (see above) claims this is due to “scheduled maintenance” but the image itself is called “defaultHomeOutageImage.gif”. Looks like the Chase website developers are a little more honest than they should have been.
1 : a quantity or bulk of something lost in transportation or storage
2.a : a failure or interruption in use or functioning
2.b : a period of interruption especially of electric current
Update 6:00 am PST: They have now been down for 14 hours. At around 12:30 am PST, probably realizing that their claim that online banking was down for scheduled maintenance strained even the remotest credibility, they changed their site to admit that it was not a scheduled outage.
So far none of the mainstream news is reporting on this outage.
Update 7:00 am PST: I’m seeing reports from Twitter (through Google updates) and Twitter that Chase’s iPhone app is not working as well and telephone banking is also down. A recent tweet claims their online banking has been down for over 24 hours. Also seeing reports that online payments are down, so if you had anything scheduled to be paid, it is not going out. I would be sure and check that things scheduled for today get processed properly.
I’ve wondered for a while now, given all the bad behavior from Chase I see, whether they are inept or malicious. I am beginning to lean towards malicious and this next story is another strike in that direction.
In short, it appears that Chase told a couple that if they brought their loan current, their car would not be repossessed. The couple came in and paid their loan current, and that evening Chase had their car reposssessed.
This seems very similar to what Chase has been doing with people late on their mortgages, telling them to keep paying a trial modification all the while working on foreclosure in parallel. It all just seems like Chase’s standard operating procedure for getting more money out of customers any way they can, even if they have to lie to do it.
Ineptitude, outages | admin September 14, 2010 | 
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