New Brunswick bank UNI has set up tents outside their Dieppe branch to protect clients from the hot sun as they line up for the fifth consecutive day to sort out various technical problems with their accounts.
Some clients have been unable to use their bank cards, access their online banking profile, pay their bills, or withdraw money.
Lakeville, N.B., resident Gisèle Pollock drove to the Moncton branch on Wednesday in hope of being able to sort out the technical problems that have made her unable to access her account. She’s been a client of UNI’s for 25 years.
“I still can’t get into my profile to go pay my bills,” she said in an interview.
“I couldn’t access my account to get any funds at all for at least four days,” she said. “I’m stressed and I had to borrow money from people which I don’t usually, as a rule,” she said.
Pollock walks with a cane due to a leg injury, and had to turn around when she saw the long line-up at the bank.
Jacques Allard came to the Moncton branch to withdraw some money, as he’s unable to access online banking.
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“At home I had difficulty accessing everything, the site crashed, I did access it but the site crashed, so I came in to check with the teller to check the status of it,” he said in an interview.
He also walked out when he saw fifty people waiting in line, intending to return “when things die down a bit.”
Robert Moreau, UNI’s CEO, attributes the technical problems to a transitional period as it withdraws from its previous service agreement with Quebec’s Desjardins bank.
“Because of the size of the transition, we’re only like a few days into it, and we’re very agile in working out those kinks,” he said in an interview on Wednesday “It’s not until you get into the full rollout and then all of the sudden its getting better very quickly within a couple of days.”
He said the branches were running on extended hours to help clients with the problems.
Some employees from UNI’s institutional clients, such as some members of CUPE local 1252 which represents New Brunswick’s council of Hospital Unions, experienced a delay in receiving their paycheques as a result of the technical problems.
Moreau said these were “fringe cases” and that while people may receive their pay at a different time of day than usual, they would all receive their paycheques.
“Today I can really reassure that these pays are coming in,” he said.
Moreau said the bank was encouraging clients experiencing problems to come to the branches in person for help. When asked if the bank is losing clients over this issue, he said, “Right now, we want to serve the members and the clients that we have.”
Neither Pollock nor Allard were interested in switching banks over the problems.
Allard said that he is loyal to UNI because the bank is an Acadian institution.
“It’s our bank. I can usually go anywhere in the province and be served in French,” he said. “It’s a tradition kind of, my parents, grandparents, everybody was with the caisse,” he said referring to its former name, the Caisses populaires acadiennes.
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