Bank Says Deposits Went Uncredited

Bank of America acknowledged on Saturday that 1.1 million direct deposit customers in California, Arizona and Nevada were affected by a computer glitch that prevented their payroll and Social Security checks from being credited to their accounts on Friday.

A bank spokesman said late Saturday that the institution was still trying to determine whether customers who pay their bills electronically were affected as well.

The bank did not know the exact cause of the problem, but believed it was an internal software glitch.

“It’s not a hacker or a computer virus,” said bank spokesman Ken Preston in Los Angeles. “We believe it’s an internal problem.”

Generally, things like this happen when a bank changes software programs, said Trent Fleming, a bank technology expert based in Memphis, Tenn. “We like to do tests before we put these systems on line but you can never exactly replicate the data that the real system is going to encounter,” Fleming said.

Bank officials could not say whether all direct deposit accounts were affected, or just certain types, such as Social Security checks or railroad retirement payments.

However, Fleming said such information was key and would help determine whether a software program had merely skipped a specific transaction code, which would be fairly simple to fix, or if it was a major glitch affecting all types of electronic transactions.

Bank of America officials said its computer specialists were working feverishly to get the problem resolved Saturday night, but could not give an estimate of when the problem would be fixed.

“We apologize to our customers who are affected by this problem,” said Ken Preston. “We are doing everything possible to immediately correct it.”

The bank said that while it appeared that automated teller deposits had been properly credited, paychecks and other automatic deposits had not.

“The killer is that this happened on the 15th when everyone is getting paid,” said Preston.

The bank said it had launched “backup procedures” to ensure “complete and accurate posting of transactions to customer accounts.”

Customers who called the bank’s automated help line (1-800-622-8731) were told by recorded message only that the bank was “aware of an automated deposit posting problem” and the bank appreciated customer patience while it attempted to resolve it.

In the meantime, the bank said it would work with customers to “resolve any issues related to this situation.”

The bottom line, said Preston, was that the bank would take care of any fees and charges if customer checks bounced as the result of the computer error.

Bank of America, based in Charlotte, N.C., is one of the nation’s oldest and largest financial institutions, with nearly a 25% market share in California.