Students looking to access Twin Cities Federal bank accounts with their U Cards were out of luck Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon.
A TCF customer service representative said the chances of the entire system being back up today were about 50-50.
The representative, who declined to be named for this story, said the bank’s entire computer system went down after programmers performed Y2K conversions over the weekend.
Previously, when customers opened an account at TCF, the date was recorded in two digits. Last weekend, programmers changed that date from two digits to four to avoid problems in the year 2000.
But the correction caused a system-wide malfunction that froze the bank’s computer systems.
The bank’s computers were down Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. The bank was fully operational both mornings.
By Wednesday night, enough of the system was up to provide students with basic services like withdrawals and deposits, but the representative said the bank was uncertain when it would be fully operational.
“There’s just not a lot of information available,” she said.
TCF’s automatic teller machines were working by Wednesday night, but transactions could not be made at other institutions’ machines at press time.
Customers were not informed ahead of time that all systems would be down.
— Nichol Nelson