# My internet bank has been inaccessible for two days!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-internet-bank-has-been-inaccessible-for-two-days/468218>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [October 16, 2008, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-internet-bank-has-been-inaccessible-for-two-days/468218 "2008-10-16T16:06:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-internet-bank-has-been-inaccessible-for-two-days/468218/1 "2008-10-16T16:06:37Z")

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My internet bank, Cahoot,[has been inaccessible](http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article4956281.ece) for two days - and counting.

How can something as basic as a power cut completely knock out an internet bank - and call centre - _for two days_? Don’t banks have power back ups? With everything that’s going wrong for banks at the moment, Santander could at least have paid their electricity bill.

Seriously, I would have thought major financial institutions would have ways of protecting themselves from something as straightfoward as a power cut. Is this normal?

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**Author:** ![Ann\_Onimous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@Ann\_Onimous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Onimous)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-internet-bank-has-been-inaccessible-for-two-days/468218/2 "2008-10-16T16:10:56Z")

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Sorry: that’s a bummer. I hope the bank’s definition of “shortly” is much faster than the normal experience with the word “shortly.”

Our call center has a huge generator. If the electricity goes out, we notice… for about 5 seconds. Then the generator kicks in. For a bank not to have a redundant call center or a back up plan is, IMHO, irresponsible.

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**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-internet-bank-has-been-inaccessible-for-two-days/468218/3 "2008-10-16T16:17:55Z")

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Cripes. After the big blackout in '03, the construction crews moved in at the place where I work and deposited an enormous diesel genset that can keep the data centre up and running as long as it has fuel. I have a friend that works on mainframes and he tells me that banks are orders of magnitude more reliable: if they get less than 99.95% uptime on their main servers, that’s a major scandal. And their systems are designed so that parts can be swapped out for preventative maintenance without interrupting service.

What kind of outfit names a bank [cahoot](http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/word/cahoot) anyways?

> [@](#):
>
> Part of Speech: Noun
> 
> Meaning: Collusion, a shady if not illegal collaboration.

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**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-internet-bank-has-been-inaccessible-for-two-days/468218/4 "2008-10-16T16:30:45Z")

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I think - at least, I hope - what they had in mind was more the meaning involving just a straight partnership (as in: in cahoots).

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**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-internet-bank-has-been-inaccessible-for-two-days/468218/5 "2008-10-16T16:36:24Z")

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> [@NineToTheSky](#):
>
> I think - at least, I hope - what they had in mind was more the meaning involving just a straight partnership (as in: in cahoots).

I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘in cahoots’ used without the implication that the partnership is shady.

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**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-internet-bank-has-been-inaccessible-for-two-days/468218/6 "2008-10-16T16:45:56Z")

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[Merriam-Webster](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/partnership) doesn’t mention anything other than a vanilla partnership.