Egg suspends access without warning

Egg has left its customers scrambling for answers after closing access to online bank accounts without warning or explanation.

Customers have been unable to access their banking details for the last two days. Customers of the Boots Advantage credit card, powered by Egg, have also been affected. There is no notice explaining the problem on the Egg.com website.

An Egg customer services representative told vnunet.com that access to accounts has been suspended while the website is being updated to incorporate interactive television. Egg will provide interactive TV banking this spring through SkyDigital's Open platform.

"The home page is up, but secure pages are down. Anything which you have to go through security for is being kept down while we are updating the site," the representative said.

The representative said the site should be running properly by Saturday, and admitted: "We have not been at full capacity since Monday. The entire IT department is working on it."

One Egg customer told vnunet.com he expects that "I am only one of their customers that will close accounts if things don't improve rapidly. The trouble is, how can you do this without online access?"

A spokeswoman for the company said that there have been "some problems over the past 48 hours" but that they are not related to security. She would not comment on the technical reasons - "Resources have been doubled. They're not saying what the technical problems are" - but if she knew, "we're not sure we would give that away".

According to the spokeswoman, some customers can access personal account information, but she would not say how many.

Customers wanting more information can ring 08451 233 233.