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Capital One’s Outage Totally Screwed Over the Working Class
For Americans working from paycheck-to-paycheck, a technical glitch to services can be dire
Last week’s Capital One outage shows how easily people’s lives can be upended by a single technical glitch: Countless transactions failed to complete, debit cards ceased to work, and panicked customers across the country — like myself — logged in to see absolutely no funds listed in their accounts. System glitches to direct deposits proved especially devastating, with outages landing on the first of the month — the day rent is due for the majority of Americans.
Fearing our precious money had simply vanished, people vented on Twitter with anger and panic. It didn’t help that Capital One didn’t send any alerts or emails about the outage until after the complaints started pouring in. Later, the company issued a half-hearted apology, saying they were sorry for the “inconvenience.” Because Capital One’s phone lines were so jammed, only a few customers were able to get through; those lucky few were then informed that there was no ETA for retrieving their funds.
Capital One was able to resolve the issue before the day was up, but the damage was done. Amid a sea of news outlets exploiting the crisis and unsympathetic trolls mocking Capital One…
