If at First You Don't Succeed...

The Australian newspaper reported yesterday that:

"A computer glitch has caused thousands of Westpac accounts to be wrongly debited, leaving some of the bank's customers out of pocket by thousands of dollars over the Christmas period.

The bank admitted yesterday 'thousands' of deit and credit card transactions had been charged twice, sending many accounts wrongly into debit and leaving the bank's customers without access to their own funds - some for more than 10 days."

I went to try and find the story online and my Google search immediately came back with:

Computer glitch strips millions from Westpac accounts

Except that's a story from September 2003, where it seems Westpac had exactly the same problem:

"Westpac customers had millions of dollars removed from their accounts during the weekend because of a computer glitch.

Angry customers started ringing the bank on Friday night, after finding it had deducted twice as much as it should have from their accounts for automatic withdrawals such as mortgage and utility bill payments. "

But hey, if you can muck it up twice, you can do it three times:

Westpac computer glitch delays $8lm in welfare payments

"About 20,000 people missed out on receiving $8 million in welfare payments this morning following a computer glitch at Westpac Banking Corp Ltd.

Westpac spokesman David Lording said a "technical glitch" involving computer information about the Centrelink and pension payments had prevented money from being put in customers' accounts across the country today. "

Clearly Westpac is a little unlucky to have two major incidents in the space of a few months, but it's all little solace to the people affected. In fairness I should point out that the banking sector is rife with stories like this from all around the world, it's not just Westpac. What would be interesting it to know a little more about the computer 'glitch' - was it human error, software bugs, Act of God....?

When Will They Get the Message

When will the music companies get the message? Yahoo has released a list of its top 10 searches for 2003. And no Paris Hilton is not number one, nor is Britney Spears or Harry Potter. It's Kazaa, the music download and peer to peer file exchange service.

Sure Kazaa has been moving towards hosting 'legitimate' music exchange, and recently announced the availability of movies (albeit only a couple so far); but by far its biggest marketplace is what the music companies would call illegal music swapping.

You'd think that being the number one most sought after thing on Yahoo might give the music companies something to ponder for the New Year. As a piece of market research - something they live and die for normally - the Yahoo rankings pretty much sum up the issue.

Despite a massive media campaign, issuing law suits against teenagers in the USA, and even securing criminal convictions against three university students in Australia, and generally endeavouring to scare the bejesus out of people, it's clearly not having much effect. What people want is to swap music, and track down tracks.

There has to be a business case in there somewhere for the music companies, and not just the obvious like iTunes and the other pay per download music purchase web sites.