| Standard-Times
Winter weather: Drone footage of Texas cities covered in snow
A record-breaking winter storm continues to dump snow on the state of Texas.
Staff Video, USA TODAY
NEW BEDFORD — The effects of Texas’ widespread power outages, brought on by a severe winter storm with record-low temperatures, reached New Bedford Monday when some account holders at the New Bedford Credit Union were unable to access the bank’s online and mobile services.
The bank’s servers for online banking are located in Texas, where hundreds of thousands of utility customers remain without power since the storm earlier this week, the Associated Press reported.
Berta Varao, president and CEO of New Bedford Credit Union, told the Standard-Times they were first notified of server problems at around 8:30 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 15, by their vendor, Fiserv.
Online and mobile banking services have been working intermittently, but for a lot of people, the ability to check account balances, make transfers and pay bills from one’s home or cell phone has been interrupted.
Varao said Fiserv representatives told her they were physically moving servers to Georgia after the generators and backup generators failed or overheated. They may also be moving some services to Arizona.
Customers have other options for banking, including calling the 24/7 banking phone line or emailing with a representative. Due to COVID-19, the lobbies are closed at both locations, but branch staff are available for in-branch services by appointment.
In a local Facebook group, a few people commented about issues they were experiencing. One person wrote the bank was having trouble with its ATM transactions on Wednesday.
Varao confirmed that beginning Wednesday afternoon, the ATM stopped processing transactions because the card data is processed by connections in Texas and Arizona. The ATM issue was resolved within a few hours, she said.
As of Wednesday evening, though, the initial problems persisted. Varao said they hope the bank’s services will be back by Thursday morning with the servers physically situated in a new location. Until then, she and other staff will continue to monitor the email at night so customers can get help early the following morning.
To account for disruptions, they also extended phone and drive-up services by three hours on Wednesday.
“We know that through a pandemic the digital channels are vital and resources our member’s value and utilize daily,” Varao said. “We are very aware of how important it is to get the systems up and running. We’re working with our vendor [round] the clock to bring this up. We thank our members for their loyalty… our membership has been so understanding throughout this entire process.”
The Wisconsin State Journal reported Wednesday that members of a Wisconsin credit union were also unable to access online banking functions on Tuesday due to the outages in Texas.
New Bedford Credit Union customers with issues can email [email protected], or call the 24/7 phone banking system at 508-994-6546.
