Found this posted on Silicon Investor:

To: William Peavey who wrote (9658) From: flatsville Sunday, Jan 2, 2000 9:49 AM ET Reply # of 9667

I've been picking-up anecdotal evidence of bank related problems. The following was by far the most interesting from csy2k given the transaction and "geography" issues involved: ************************* Wow. Some people don't have a clue as to what the problem is. I'll give my y2k testimonial:

I will preface by saying that my family are living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa. On the 8th of Dec. I went online to view my 'American Bank Account'. Somehow over $4k of charges had been placed on my account on that day. What the ...?! Of course I called my US Bank asking what the hell was going on, had someone frauded my debit card? We have had our cards frauded since we've been here, so we are always on the alert for any funny business. Our branch manager and ultimately the Regional Manager of this bank were stumped. Neither had seen anything like this before. If it was card fraud the thief would have only been able to purchase or withdraw up to our daily limits. These charges went way beyond that. Wait, it gets better. Five days later, four days after notifying my bank of the problem, another batch of charges was placed on our account totaling over $5k!! So now we have been charged $10k including bank charges! Now I call back my bank wanting blood. What the hell kind of mickey mouse operation are you running? Well, they tell me, it seems that all of those charges are coming from one institution in Sth Africa. So they tell me that institution has sent through all those charges all at once, and if I want to expedite the investigation, I should go to that bank and request proof/documentation of those transactions I was disputing. I finally get to the proper division of this SA bank and the person on the phone matter-of-factly says, "Oh yes, you have a foreign debit card. No ATM transactions made by foreign debit cards have been charged since August 27th, so we have just run through all transactions that occurred over that period. We have switched to a new system because of the y2k and it crashed (the system is by EDS for those interested)." WHAT!!! So what these fools are saying is that anyone that used a foreign debit card in their ATM machines had been getting free money for three months! Cool right? Wrong. Only thing is the money was coming out of my account. My hard copy statement from my US bank shows some of the disputed charges, I haven't gotten my latest statements. So, as I write this it is the 2nd of Jan. and I have yet to be refunded my money because the SA bank has yet to produce the proof of transactions. They won't refund the money without knowing where the error is and my US bank isn't going to refund it until the SA bank show them the documentation!

Bad data is a bitch ladies and gentlemen.

This problem took three months to show up according to the SA bank, and I sit here deep in red. I work with two other people who are experiencing the same thing, both British bank debit card holders. How many others? Tourists? Travellers? Can you afford a $10k hit for a month?Two? Tell it to the Mortgage/Auto/Phone/Llights/.....

Yes, csy2kers, We've been hit. One of Cory's cuts, but it's a slash to us.

PS-Shall I speak on the 286/386 era computers one sees when you go to pay your electricity bill here? The ones marked 'Non-Compliant. Not for critical use.'? So they might keep the lights on, but they won't be able to send you a bill...

Leonard

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/

-- Laurane (familyties@rttinc.com), January 02, 2000

Answers

"but it's a slash to us" is the most important statement you could have made. I certainly hope things work out for you. My thoughts will be with you.

-- Michael (michaelteever@buffalo.com), January 02, 2000.

Laurane: Do you like to mudwrestle?

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), January 02, 2000.