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A software bug commencing on 1 January 2010 has caused panic amongst Queensland retailers who thought the Y2k bug had finally arrived a decade late.
Reports indicate that an error in software installed on EFTPOS machines meant that they recognised the current year as 2016 rather than 2010 and as a result any attempt to undertake a process using a card with an expiry date before 2016 was rejected on the basis that the card was no longer valid. Merchants in tourists areas have reportedly suffered significant loss of sales in the period before the problem was identified and addressed.
The problem apparently affected about 15,000 EFTPOS machines. Each one of these machines requires a maintenance update to be installed. The supplier has claimed that this is a simple task and will take about 2 or 3 minutes per terminal. By my reckoning that equates to 750 hours of unproductive work without taking into account any travel or other time consumed in the process.
The detail of the problem has not been publically disclosed but it is likely that the coding errors leading to this problem are not complex and there is probably a basis to argue that these errors should have been avoided with appropriate design, coding and testing of the software.
The losses suffered by business would be very difficult to measure and prove but I expect a lot of potential customers walked out of shops in frustration when their cards were declined. I expect that the EFTPOS machines and associated services were provided on terms which exclude or severely limit any liability for these losses.
The supplier has denied that the problem has any relationship with the Y2k problem.
Many will recall the hysteria surrounding the massive business interruption and catastrophes which were predicted to occur on 1 January 2000. Underneath all this hype, there is no doubt that some software suffered from one or more date related processing bugs which needed to be fixed.
Despite what the supplier has said, the reports of this problem suggest that this latest problem is just another type of date related processing problem. This new problem appears to have a lot in common with typical Y2k problems (e.g. where the year 2000 was stored as “00” and therefore treated as an earlier year than the year 1999, stored as “99”).
In honour of the Vegemite non-event of last year, perhaps this latest problem should be called iY2.010”
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