A network problem shut down all of LaSalle Bank’s ATMs in the Chicago area for much of the day Monday, leaving student customers without cash and creating long lines at the bank’s Northwestern branch.
The only way for NU students with LaSalle accounts to avoid the extra fees charged by non-LaSalle ATMs was to visit a branch at either Norris University Center or 1336 Chicago Ave. At Norris, the line of students waiting for tellers often stretched to the opposite wall.
The ATMs became functional again late Monday.
Micheyl Rosenbalm, assistant manager of LaSalle’s Chicago Avenue branch, said the problem produced an influx of customers who had to use the bank’s tellers to access accounts.
“There was a drove,” Rosenbalm said. “There were tons of customers, and it was because the machines were down.”
The only communication LaSalle’s main office sent to the branches was a notification of the systemwide ATM failure, Rosenbalm said.
She said the corporate office cited “network problems” as the cause of the outage.
After the Chicago Avenue branch closed at 5 p.m. on Monday, customers were unable to make deposits or withdrawals, Rosenbalm said.
“People couldn’t access their accounts, which might have been a problem,” she said.
Outages like this are unusual, Rosenbalm said.
“I can’t really remember anything like this happening for many, many, many years,” she said. “And I’ve been with LaSalle 15 years.”
Shawn Platt, LaSalle’s public relations officer, said he did not know details about the network outage, but he did say the bank tries to restore service as soon as possible when the system goes down.
“Anytime (the network shuts down), we certainly try to handle it expeditiously,” Platt said. “But sometimes it happens. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused customers.”
A representative from Bank One, 1603 Orrington Ave., said that except for the routine malfunctioning of certain machines, Bank One’s ATMs were unaffected by Monday’s outage.
Therefore, students in desperate need of cash could have gone to another bank’s ATM machine, although they would have been charged a fee.
The ATM outage irritated Medill sophomore Jordan Burgess, who said he tried to access money three times at ATMs on University Place and at Norris, to no avail.
“I just wanted to take some money out,” Burgess said. “Finally I just said, ‘Forget it.'”
Instead of waiting in the long line at the Norris branch, Burgess decided to wait until Tuesday for his cash. But he said he was still annoyed by the ATM outage.
“You have to wonder what’s going on when something like that happens,” he said. “I mean, they’ve got my money.”
