• H Finn (unregistered)

    Let me just point out that the strict deadline was probably caused by the long easter weekend. As they needed to close down their systems for migration, it was best done during a holiday.

    That doesn't make the fiasco any more acceptable though.

  • Zyrppa (unregistered)

    I was customer of Sampo. Not anymore. It was veeery nice when you realized that "oh, i've to go to atm to get some money, my wallet is empty". "Enter you pin numer" "beeb beeb beeb beeb beeb" "please wait....." "Can't connect to bank, please try again later" "damned!" walks to another atm and same thing. and another. Goes to shop and tries to buy thing (like food!) with Visa Electron -> card doesn't work, because theres some problems within that god damn fucking bank!.

  • (cs) in reply to MBV
    MBV:
    Peter:
    ... I know, it's in danish, and only a very select few can read that, ...
    I guess all Scandinavians can read it, and in The Netherlands too (although it requires some effort). So not as select as you might think...

    Try reading a Dutch article on some page, I'm curious if it works the other way around :)

    Depends on your definition of Scandinavians. To Finnish speakers, Danish is as impenetrable as Dutch is to, well anyone who is not Dutch ;-) Finns aren't really Scandinavians although they are often regarded as such - they are from the Finno-Ugrian group of peoples that include Estonians and Hungarians, and geographically Finland is more a part of European Russia than Scandinavia.

  • RF (unregistered)

    Maybe they were planning on developing the site for 33 years, having it go down the Friday before, then come back up on THAT Easter.

    Either way, it'd be a miracle if they'd managed to keep all their customers happy.

  • (cs) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    Depends on your definition of Scandinavians. To Finnish speakers, Danish is as impenetrable as Dutch is to, well anyone who is not Dutch ;-)

    Technically you are right, but it happens that almost every Finn understands basics of Swedish, which is the second official language of Finland and mandatory subject in schools. On the other hand, Finno-Ugric languages other than Estonian are so different from Finnish that it is hard to recognize that they belong to same group.

  • grumpy (unregistered) in reply to K&T
    I don't know about Sambo but Danske Bank's online system still only works in Windows using Internet Explorer
    Nah, they've got a cross-browser version too (but of course they don't use that one for IE ;))
    Tourist:
    This just confirms my suspicions that the Danes can't program, at least not since Bjarne moved to the US.
    Harhar, very funny. ;)

    Are you saying the guy who invented C++ is making us look good? :p You might as well name the guy who made PHP (Rasmus something). Sure, it's popular as hell, but it doesn't prove that he (or any other Danish developer) could code. I feel better about Anders Hejlsberg being Danish. C# is a hell of a lot easier to defend than C++.

    Why is it we have our greasy fingers in the creation of so many programming languages anyway?

    K&T:
    I wonder how many people there are nowadays in the U.S. who really cannot believe bills can be paid via the Internet. Yep, my friend visiting the US told he was met with disbelief telling here in Finland we really do that. And have been for more than 20 years (at first via direct modem connections and national networks). They thought he was BS'ing them. I believe the practice back there still is to mail checks, and salary paid directly to your account is considered something revolutionary.

    I can't tell if you're being serious or not. At any rate, unless your friend visited back in the 50s, this isn't the case. It's actually fairly difficult to find a job that doesn't do direct deposit (the name given to the process where your employer pays directly into your bank account). Small start ups and contracting, jobs targeted to students will still do paychecks but most places have direct deposit.

    He didn't say direct deposits (which everyone does in Europe. Startups, contracting and anything else included. I haven't seen a cheque for a decade or so) He said direct billing. I don't need to pay the rent. I've authorized it on my netbank, so the money gets debited automatically. I don't have to send cheques, and I don't have to log in to my netbank to transfer the money.

    As for paying bills online, the only bill i can't pay online is my rent. Heck, I can even pay traffic tickets online.
    Why can't you pay the rent? In the rest of the world, the bank lets you pay any bill, and transfer any amount of money to any other bank account online. Unless you're required to bury the money under a tree in a park somewhere at 3am on the last saturday each month, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to pay it online. Otherwise, I think you've proven his point. The simple fact that there are bills you can't pay online is pretty incredible.

    Oh, and I'm actually a customer of Danske Bank. And I haven't had any trouble with them, except that for a long time they did refuse to supply a netbanking client for non-IE browsers. They have one now, but now I can't be bothered switching. I've just got the IETab extension in Firefox to automatically switch to IE whenever I go to the bank's website.

    I should also mention that they've actually got a hell of a lot of development staff. They keep telling us CS students that they're the biggest IT employer in the country. (And yes, they're constantly trying to recruit us, so at least it's not like they only want to hire cheap incompetent PHP or VB coders, or outsource everything). I'm not sure what they use all these computer scientists for though.

    They've had a few really big system crashes over the last years, but supposedly they were caused by IBM screwing up, not the bank.

    And no, not trying to defend them. Just saying that I haven't had any problems, and their netbanking does work with non-IE and has for a couple of years now.

    But that doesn't mean they haven't screwed up with Sampo. And they've probably got plenty of other shortcomings that I just haven't encountered.

  • Scandinavian (unregistered) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    Depends on your definition of Scandinavians.

    I guess the definition also depends on which country you live in. I'm from a Scandinavian country (won't say which to avoid any bad feelings) and Finland is part of the Nordic countries, but Finland is not considered a part of Scandinavia.

    The Scandinavian countries (in alphabetical order) are Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Mostly because we have similar languages and history I guess (There weren't many Vikings in Finland)

  • Mr. (unregistered) in reply to LarsL
    LarsL:
    Who cares if a candidate has experience with a specific programming language, as long as he or she has general experience and a solid educational background in e.g. Computer Science? I don't!

    I agree. If you have a solid education, you should be able to learn any programming language quite quickly. Most fresh graduates only know the syntax of Java/C# anyway and can perhaps make a simple CD database or something. Most of the real "education" happens when they get into the real world. Universities are just supposed to teach the basic theory, and those applies to most languages

  • Mr. (unregistered) in reply to LarsL
    LarsL:
    Who cares if a candidate has experience with a specific programming language, as long as he or she has general experience and a solid educational background in e.g. Computer Science? I don't!

    I agree. If you have a solid education, you should be able to learn any programming language quite quickly. Most fresh graduates only know the syntax of Java/C# anyway and can perhaps make a simple CD database or something. Most of the real "education" happens when they get into the real world. Universities are just supposed to teach the basic theory, and those applies to most languages

  • Scandinavian (unregistered) in reply to Machine Head
    Machine Head:
    Having lived there (in Finland) for 5 years, I must say that this country has one of the most advanced banking systems in the world. Money transfers are usually completed within a few seconds (!) - my maximum was 20 minutes, but that was only because several technical problems came together :-)

    I think the situation is the same in other Nordic countries as well. In my country we even have electronic invoices that can be approved with a click of a button or with SMS :-) When I get an electronic invoice, I get an SMS message from my bank, and I can just send a message back accepting the invoice. It will be paid on the due date automatically.

    In fact, I can transfer money from my account to another account with a simple SMS message. The accounts have to first be verified in the web application, so that nobody can steal the phone and transfer money to their own bank. I can also set a fixed limit on the amounts. The electronic invoices is already verified since you need to activly accept electronic invoices from a sender the first time.

    We could also pay our bills with a standard phone 15-20 years ago. And before that, the paper invoices often contained an id-code (with checksum of course). We just gave it to the bank personell and they ran it through a computer that read the number automatically. The companies could use that for automatic bill handling

  • www.varuste.net (unregistered) in reply to biziclop

    There's not many people or companies left who has Sampo as their primary account. That's what counts.

    Most companies still must have an account in Sampo. Two of the companies I work for ( http://www.varuste.net and http://www.mooble.fi ) have a Sampo account because of web payments. Or just to get invoice payments a little bit faster from other Sampo using customers. I have also an Sampo account for the guarantee for my rent but I never actually do anything with them.

    When the times were worst there were several model girls at the Helsinki main Sampo bank office. They flirted to the customers trying to have them not to change the bank. Is that cheap or what?

  • Zambo (unregistered) in reply to www.varuste.net

    ... cheap as the previous TDWTF comic strip: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/213-The-Demo.aspx

  • Vanadium (unregistered)

    http://www.danskebank.com/en-uk/ir/Documents/2008/Q2/In terim-report-first-half-2008.pdf

    "Because of the problems, Sampo Bank has lost around 28,000 (net) of its retail customers. A net 2,200 Finnish corporate customers have left, the vast majority of them small businesses. The outflow corresponds to 2% of the total number of customers in Finland."

  • Greippi1 (unregistered)

    And remember, 20,000 customers might not be much in a country like UK, Germany or USA, but Finland only has 5 million inhabitants, so over 20,000 customers and few thousand business customers won't be easy to just ignore. Luckily I am a customer for another bank...

  • Jari (unregistered)

    If it only were trouble with online userinterface I could have lived with it. Unfortunately problems go way deeper than that.

    This summer Sampo sent me a bill of over 2700 euros for my student loan interests. Student loan intrests are about 5% of which only 1% is to be paid while still studying.

    Maximum annual loan is also 2700 euros. Now you can quite easily calculate how many years I must have spent with my Bachelors degree...

    Obviously I use Sampo no longer for anything money related.

  • Jean (unregistered) in reply to Synchronos
    Synchronos:
    Ren:
    [..] since clients from Sampo Bank were unable to send their scheduled or direct-billed money.

    Hey, there are many U.S. citizens reading here! They cannot understand the concept of direct-billing, i.e. company automatically charging your account. "WTF, somebody can pay bills without snailmailing checks?! Even by doing nothing at all?!"

    I wonder how many people there are nowadays in the U.S. who really cannot believe bills can be paid via the Internet. Yep, my friend visiting the US told he was met with disbelief telling here in Finland we really do that. And have been for more than 20 years (at first via direct modem connections and national networks). They thought he was BS'ing them. I believe the practice back there still is to mail checks, and salary paid directly to your account is considered something revolutionary.

    To be blunt, your friend is full of it.

    I haven't snailed off a check to pay a bill in years. I first got direct deposit for my paychecks in 1983. My 83-year-old mother pays her bills online, for frack's sake. And yes, I am an American. An ordinary, middle-aged, run-of-the mill American.

    If there's anyone in this country who doesn't know you can pay bills online, it's because they live in a cave. Everyone who bills you nags you about it. Everywhere you look there are ads from every bank touting how much better their online banking services are than every other bank. I still get dead-tree bills from a couple of utility companies (mostly because I'm too lazy to tell them to knock it off) that always have a big notice to remind their customers how much faster and easier online payment, either manual or scheduled, is. This implies that there are people who don't use online payment, but they certainly know it's an option.

    CAPTCHA: abbas WTF? The Daily WTF is a Fatah front?

  • Kuba (unregistered) in reply to Jean
    Jean:
    Synchronos:
    Ren:
    [..] since clients from Sampo Bank were unable to send their scheduled or direct-billed money.

    Hey, there are many U.S. citizens reading here! They cannot understand the concept of direct-billing, i.e. company automatically charging your account. "WTF, somebody can pay bills without snailmailing checks?! Even by doing nothing at all?!"

    To be blunt, your friend is full of it.

    I haven't snailed off a check to pay a bill in years. I first got direct deposit for my paychecks in 1983. My 83-year-old mother pays her bills online, for frack's sake. And yes, I am an American. An ordinary, middle-aged, run-of-the mill American.

    If there's anyone in this country who doesn't know you can pay bills online, it's because they live in a cave.

    Yeah, very soon after I started studying here (in the U.S.), I've got automatic billing set up on everything one gets bills for (gas, electric, phone, cable tv). I never did rent electronically, because most small real estate management companies simply don't/won't process them like that, but everything else is paid automatically.

    I opt to get dead-tree bills (which say "DO NOT PAY") just for the convenience of archiving them, many sites will only provide a history of 6 or 12 months of prior bills. Instead of remembering to print them out every once in a while, I just receive them in the mail, but I have nothing to do with them besides putting them in a folder.

    And these days I only have to pay for cable service (phone/tv/internet) and electricity anyway.

    Naturally, credit card / loan payments are either done online at my leisure, or they can be set up to be automatic. Same goes for various pay deduct payments (student health insurance, parking, ...), savings, car/life/renters insurance, blahblah.

    Heck, car insurance quotes are done online too -- their system checks your driving record and whatnot while you wait :)

    So, here in the U.S. we're not quite as back-asswards as you make us.

    As for what passes for a "well built" house -- let's just say I'll leave it for another day. [small print: wooden shacks where you routinely get -10C in winters -- yay!]

  • Kuba (unregistered) in reply to Jean
    Synchronos:
    Hey, there are many U.S. citizens reading here! They cannot understand the concept of direct-billing, i.e. company automatically charging your account. "WTF, somebody can pay bills without snailmailing checks?! Even by doing nothing at all?!"

    Re U.S.: I have to agree that people who are 40+ are quite likely not only sending checks (dozens!) to pay their bills each month, but they indulge themselves in balancing their checkbook (WTF?!) and so on. So, while you're out of line saying that automatic/electronic/on-line bill payments are unheard of (not at all!), they are likely mostly used by "younger" people. I pay my rent (and only rent) by check each month, and I have not ever balanced my checkbook, thank $DEITY.

  • multifail (unregistered) in reply to Kuba
    Kuba:
    So, while you're out of line saying that automatic/electronic/on-line bill payments are unheard of (not at all!), they are likely mostly used by "younger" people. I pay my rent (and only rent) by check each month, and I have not ever balanced my checkbook, thank $DEITY.

    Balance a checkbook? WTF is that?

    I remember my dad had a checkbook when I was a kid, but I haven't seen such thing for at least 25 years here in Finland.

  • Michael (unregistered) in reply to Joakim

    Thats not quite true - Danske supports Mac OS X. You just need a code generator taht the bank provides.

  • thorYorak (unregistered) in reply to Buzer

    The whole site is done in Sharepoint.

  • jd (unregistered) in reply to joutsa

    The article states that the numbers are given by Danske Bank. Considering what I've heard about the amounts of incoming Sampo customers from the other banks I suppose that is the amount of the actually closed accounts. The amount of for example the monthly salaries paid to the private persons' accounts in Sampo Pankki has probably decreased a lot more. They aren't exactly lying but sure know how to count the amount of lost customers for press release, other figures stay in the cabinets.

  • digiyesterday (unregistered) in reply to Buzer
    Buzer:
    Also, their communication director kept saying "It's not a hole before we have confirmed it's a hole" in public when the XSS holes were being released and only accepting that they "might" have been holes when finally fixed.
    As a matter of fact, this very same communications director got enough of this and resigned.

    Other finnish banks are now estimating to have about 50 000 new customers since this Easter day. Same kind of problems can be expected to hit Sampo,s branches in Baltic states, when the same "integration" will be executed over there...

    I myself had to acquire one more card to wallet from other bank (yes, I am also a Sampo,s customer)

  • Ville (unregistered) in reply to Håvard Pedersen
    Håvard Pedersen:
    Unfortunately, I have a loan in the bank, and one of the terms for said loan is that I use Fokus Bank for my daily banking needs. The minute that loan is down to zero, I'm switching bank...
    I changed banks even though I have a loan in Sampo Pankki. When they found out they said that loan was on terms that I use Sampo Pankki for my daily banking needs. Well, I told them that there's no such term in my loan contract but they said it's "naturally assumed" even though not written anywhere.

    I told them that I don't care what they assume and also that their service level has been totally different what I should "naturally assume". That kind of ended the conversation. :D

  • digiyesterday (unregistered) in reply to digiyesterday

    Now it seems that Danske has learned something from this failure and they canceled the plans to integrate Sampo's branches in Baltic states into Danske's system...

  • Customer in Denmark (unregistered)

    Oh, in Denmark Danske Bank is great - I resently got a loan issued with property as collateral that I had just sold! :-)

    If the local people in the branches just push the right buttons you receive the documents from Head Office without them questioning ANYTHING!

    They are dilletantes ...

  • BadAmigo (unregistered) in reply to moltonel

    I think I would not care whether my bank uses outdated Lotus or even Pine mailer unless it does not impact my service. Probably guys wanted to save on upgrade and transition ;)

  • Allan (unregistered) in reply to A Nonny Mouse

    Yes, that's a classic idea.

    I think it was the book "Mythical Man Month" that has the best disproof of that idea. Paraphrasing: If it normally takes a woman 9 months to have a baby, we ought to be able to hire 9 women, thereby having the baby in one month!

  • Anone (unregistered)

    That's the worst analogy ever. All 9 women are working on different babies. Hiring 9 women to have babies as opposed to one woman is only applicable to the case where you NEED nine+ babies, and the vast majority of the time they will get that done a lot quicker than one woman on their own.

  • (cs)

    hi! im Frank a college student from chicago university, we were assigned to create a college essay about banking system, And i choose Sampo Bank for my essay. And i hve know more about the this bank. thanks for this forum.

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