Bank of Ireland customers who overdrew during ATM glitch given repayment deadline

Customers impacted have been contacted by letter.

Bank of Ireland have told customers who withdrew money they didn’t have during the infamous ATM glitch that they have six months to repay the bank “interest-free.”

It’s hard to believe that the fateful night when the Irish public got a bit ahead of themselves and hoarded ATMs around the country to try and access free money was little more than six weeks ago.

This Wednesday, September 27, the bank informed customers who went into “unauthorised overdraft” on August 15, that a plan is now in place to pay back the money without incurring interest.

“Our objective overall is to ensure no customers suffer financial detriment as a consequence of the mistake we made,” said Myles O’Grady, Group CEO of Bank of Ireland speaking at the Oireachtas Committee on Finance on Wednesday.

Susan Russell, CEO of Retail Ireland with BOI, added: “We have contacted every customer by letter and have asked for them to reach out to us so we can speak to them on a case-by-case basis.”

While it wasn’t revealed how many customers were affected by the unauthorised overdrafts, Ms Russell said that a large amount of customers had already contacted BOI regarding the issue.

Ms Russell was also unable to disclose what the highest amount withdrawn by a customer was on the night.

Customers have six months to repay Bank of Ireland after ATM glitch

The August 15 glitch led to a huge number of people queuing up at ATMs around the country as word spread online, with customers thinking they could get ‘free money’.

Queues got so out of hand that gardaí were deployed to stand guard over the ATMs, with some even blocking access to the terminals.

At the Oireachtas meeting on Wednesday, September 27, Mr O’Grady said the bank had no role in getting the gardaí involved, saying that they did so under public order grounds on the night.

Once the glitch was fixed, BOI issued an apology saying: “We sincerely apologise for the disruption this outage caused – we know we fell far below the standards our customers expect from us.”

Header image via Getty 

This article originally appeared on joe.ie 

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