Coast Capital Savings Enters 4th Day of Banking Shutdown for ‘System Upgrade’

British Columbia’s Coast Capital Savings credit union, the largest by membership in the country, has entered its fourth day of a complete banking shutdown, with two more days to go until branches and banking services resume.

Coast Capital started notifying customers of the impending shutdown a month ago, but as of Friday evening, branches have been closed, online banking on the web and through mobile apps have become unavailable, along with telephone banking. That means if you didn’t make bill payments before the shutdown, you’re out of luck.

Only ATM services are available, but limited to withdrawals, deposits and PIN changes. The company’s debit cards and Desjardins Visa card still works.

“During the outage, our Advice Centre will be open 24 hours a day to answer your questions, although the service outage will prevent us from accessing your accounts or processing banking transactions. However, we can answer questions about the outage and cancel any lost or stolen debit cards,” said Coast Capital’s website.

Starting on Wednesday, April 13, branches will re-open again and all services will be back online.

“There will be no noticeable changes to you, or to the way you bank. However, these updates will allow us to optimize our system performance to deliver new and upgraded solutions and services to our members,” says the credit union.

Many on social media weren’t too happy about the timing of the shutdown and how it was carried out, without a backup system in place:

Filed my taxes yesterday. Anyone else confused and pissed as to why #CoastCapitalSavings shut down their online banking system for upgrades during tax month? What a pain in the ass! pic.twitter.com/zZtmJtWx4Q

— Judith St Denis (@Ravenarie) April 10, 2022

Five days is completely unacceptable.

Are you planning to cover any costs that customers may incur because they are completely unable to do any banking?!?

— Andrea MacPherson (@macpherson_a) April 9, 2022

This is so poorly planned. My only hope is that next time an outage is scheduled, it will be done in a way that doesn't restrict services for half a week.

— Dr. Suzanne Reinhardt (@EdTech4Funky1s) April 9, 2022

We will be closing our accounts the instant we have access to them.

It is 100% unacceptable to not be able to access our funds for transfers, regardless of your pathetic words of support.

We will make it our personal mission to tell everyone else we know to move banks as well.

— M. (@MarkShe05644030) April 11, 2022

This is UNACCEPTABLE….your claims of having adequately promoted this to members? This is the ONLY TWEET. Fire your IT Director and you Communications Director. #disappointedagain

— jenmawby (@jenmawby) April 11, 2022

Are you currently affected by the Coast Capital Savings shut down?