On July 19, Bank of America (NYSE:$BAC) system outage shut customers out of their accounts for several hours.

Eric Sleeper, a Coral Springs resident, stated that he got an unsettling email from the bank on Wednesday and immediately called customer service to see if something was wrong. According to Sleeper, there was a message on his online account which said that it was unable to retrieve his information.

After calling his local branch, Sleeper was informed that local managers were calling each other trying to figure out the root cause of what appeared to be a national outage and why they couldn’t provide certain services.

Downdetector.com, a website that tracks system outages, showed that reports were starting to spike after 11:30 am and the website was then filled with comments from Bank of America customers around the country saying they couldn’t access their online banking for their apps and computers. Additionally, customers were struggling to transfer money and deposit money or checks.

By Wednesday afternoon – 1 p.m. to be exact – the Bank of America website had received almost 1,000 reports of problems. However, by Wednesday night, even though some customers were still experiencing problems, the number of reports had decreased to about 200.

According to Jumana Bauwens, the spokeswoman for Bank of America, the bank was fully aware of the issues with online and mobile banking and is working to fix the problem. “I know that the team is working quickly to bring everything back up. As time progresses they should be able to go back online.”

When asked what was the root cause of the national outage, Bauwens said that she “did not have that information.”

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