Rabobank security cert expires and gives its Australian Android app a case of internet-blindness

Needs bank staff to sort things out, but a certain virus means the contact centre is rather busy right now

Rabobank’s Australian outpost has messed up its Android app, leaving an unknown number of users unable to access their bank accounts on mobile devices.

Customers brought The Register’s attention to the pile of woeful reviews for the bank’s app, many featuring a complaint that it produces the error “Unable to connect … please check your internet connection”. Said error is clearly incorrect as users’ Android devices are indeed online with every other app!

The Register asked Rabobank what’s afoot and we were told: “There was a recent issue which was caused by an expired security certificate within the bank’s mobile banking app. It only affected Android users causing the ‘connection error’ message when customers tried to log in to their app.”

“This security certificate problem has since been fixed, with a new app update released which has resolved the issue for the majority of impacted customers,” we were told.

However the fix didn’t work for all users.

“The bank is assisting those still-impacted customers to provide a work-around solution (i.e. un-installing, reinstalling and re-registering the app), while we continue to work on the system fix required to resolve the problem.”

Complicating matters is that customers need to chat to Rabobank’s contact centre to resolve the problem. However that “has recently experienced a higher volume of calls … as a function of the current market conditions, which is not unexpected given the circumstances.”

Which sounds like “Your call is important, but we’re slammed by a certain virus right now.”

Which will be cold comfort to those keen to understand the state of their bank accounts at the time of massive economic uncertainty.

The bank has at least set up a way for users to avoid the queue: a missive sent to [e-mail] will generate an inbound phone call to sort the app out. “The bank apologises for the inconvenience caused to our Online Savings customers as a result of this problem,” we were told. ®