Forum Moderators: buckworks
In the last month there have been five outages, totaling 8.3 hours. They have been for various reasons but nothing that I would describe as an emergency. For example, last night their settlement system didn't work so they took the system down for an hour this morning to 'correct problems'.
Do you think its acceptable for an institution like this to ever take their service offline?
One thing you have to think about is that by using their system you are subject to their problems. The only way you are going to get 100% uptime is if you run your own system, but then it's your headache if something goes wrong.
Think about how much work and time they save you by providing their service, and if that doesn't add up to the 8.3 hours, start looking for a replacement.
Well if there was a problem they should take it offline to fix it
The only way you are going to get 100% uptime is if you run your own system
Think about how much work and time they save you by providing their service
What sort of downtime is anyone else experiencing with their merchant provider? What sort of compensation package do they offer?
If you don't have one you are up the creek without a paddle.
If you do, you should have memorized it before even signing up with them.
SLAs are the lifeblood of service providers (SP), and your vendor is an SP. IF you didn't get one, there might be some advertising information available that indicates their guaranteed uptime.
Most SLAs provide a recourse for the client to get discounts for future time. i.e. tack on an extra free months, discounted monthly fees, free transactions, etc. See if you can get some of that.
However, this isn't about SLA's.
Its actually more a technical question than a practical one and it is this:
Should a major merchant service providor ever be down? If so, under what circumstances?
Authorizenet.com went down about eight times in the past yeat, while Verisign was down once. LinkPoint did not go down. Depending on your sales, you might consider another electronic payment gateway in conjunction with your current one or you might switch over to another one.
Those 8 hours that you were down is just like closing shop for the day
-Corey
As you say, its like shutting shop. Personally I don't think this should ever happen. Its good to hear you're in agreement. I can't understand why companies much larger than ours don't go crazy when this happens.
But yes - if the gateway is down - no payments can be received so no orders can be placed. It would be the same thing as if you were running a store and the electricity went out. You could not operate your cash register (of course, you could add up the purchases, etc) but nothing else could be done.
There are some other gateways that you might check out. I would contact them and see which ones they are compatible with first and then take a look at those gateways. I know protx was down for awhile last year but a gateway should not do down hardly at all.
-Corey
However, this isn't about SLA's.
Six Sigma. I would expect their uptime to be 99.9997%/year. Less then 2 minutes down per year. That is what's expected of major financial systems, telecommunications systems, etc.
-Corey
I really just wanted to know if there's any excuse for a major financial institution to have downtime and I agree with Tapolyai, 99.999 percent uptime is about reasonable. I don't want to overly dramatise things but these guys are like the stock exchange. Hundreds of millions are being transacted hourly. I find it quite startling that they think its okay to go offline for eight hours in a month.
Is it Barclay's internet ePDQ you are using?
On a relevant side-note, Barclays online banking seems slow compared to Natwest. Maybe their IT R&D just isn't up to scratch.
8.3 hours downtime in a year would be unacceptable for me, let alone a month
Yes, they go down, I've dealt with about 5 of them and everyone has issues now and then, it's unavoidable.
There are 8,760 hours a year so 8 hours a year is nothing as that still puts them at %99.9 uptime for the year.
Even if they are up, there can be internet routing issues that block your server from reaching their site to complete the transaction. I've had routes down at various times between our site and UPS, USPS, payment processor, yada yada, all keeping my site's checkout offline. The more remote sites you interconnect with, the more likely a critical failure can occur. Case in point, I couldn't connect to WebmasterWorld twice yesterday thanks to some AT&T router that was on the fritz.
Is it Barclay's internet ePDQ you are using?
There are 8,760 hours a year so 8 hours a year is nothing as that still puts them at %99.9 uptime for the year.
there can be internet routing issues that block your server from reaching their site to complete the transaction.
At the very least you should ask for compensation, retain a merchant advocate to re-negotiate your deal with your bank, or implement a dual bank payment structure that has dynamic load balancing ie: will detect when a gateway is down and send your transactions to another bank.
Banks don't want you to do this, but is compliant and effective (and incidentally keeps them on their toes when it comes to pricing in the future).
regards
Jag
Barclaycard Business have advised me that they're within their service level of 98.5% which is what their supplier's guarantee to them. I make that an allowance of around 5.5 days a year. Doesn't that seem like a lot?
They don't have a service level agreement as part of their standard merchant terms and conditions.
-Corey
