Some UK HSBC customers were left unable to make card payments or withdraw cash from ATMs yesterday thanks to an IT hardware failure.
Services were affected on Sunday afternoon with the glitch fixed by around 19.30, according to a tweet sent out by the HSBC UK press account.
The bank apologised to angry customers, many of whom had taken to Twitter themselves to berate it and threaten to move accounts:
However, others were more forgiving and appreciative of HSBC's Twitter updates:
The bank has developed a dedicated social media monitoring team in recent months, prompted by a major IT outage in November. Speaking at Finextra's Social Media Day in April, the man behind the platform, Neil Kirkman, revealed that he had secured its budget following the disaster, which demonstrated the huge reputational risk of not taking a proactive approach to monitoring and interacting with customers online.