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GMAC Bank’s Website is Down
By JLP | September 26, 2007
I haven’t been able to access GMACBank all morning. I wish companies would throw up a “Sorry, we’re experiencing problems” landing page instead of the standard Internet Explorer message that makes it look like the website doesn’t exist.
I remember this happening once before. It’s not a big deal, I just wanted to check my balance.
UPDATE: 8:00 PM CST – I just got off the phone with GMAC Bank and the lady I spoke to said that they didn’t have any information but that they had a ticket out to get it fixed. I’m a little disappointed that they don’t have some sort of landing page that informs their customers of the outtage. Also, there was no recorded message telling me of the outtage when I called them.
It looks like they need to do some infrastructure improvements.
Topics: Banking | 23 Comments »
September 26th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Seems to be back now. Now that the rate is lower (4.9% APY), how does GMAC compare to other high-yield accounts? I’m sure others lowered their rates comparably, so I’m sure it’s still in the ballpark with the highest rates.
September 26th, 2007 at 11:11 am
They changed the rate last week. It’s still quite a bit higher than the other banks from what I can tell.
September 26th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Site has been down off and on for the last three days. They need to do something to get this fixed. Can’t access my money.
September 26th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
The website is still down. What’s going on!?!?!?! I want to check my deposits.
September 26th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
I have not been able to access the site for the last 2 or 3 days. It would be nice to know what GMAC is doing to correct the matter. I would like to check my balances and set up a transfer.
P.S. If one truly needs access to their money I believe going through the toll free number is the only way to access it. I’m sure the wait time will be huge.
September 26th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
This is ridiculous…I have not been able to access my money for 3 days. Has anyone tried using an ATM or their check card?
September 26th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Gaurav,
The lady on the phone told me the site had been down just since yesterday evening (Tuesday). I don’t know because I haven’t tried to access my account since last week.
September 26th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
This is completely unacceptable. How can a web site go down this long in today’s world? GMAC Bank is an INTERNET bank and their web site is not a marketing portal, it’s its entire business. It’s like Bank of America closing all its branches and not telling anyone. Sure you can call and make a transaction but this seems too convenient for the web site to be down during the GM strike. A bit suspicious. I’m going to look into other banking options.
September 26th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
I also called GMAC and the woman I spoke to said that this is a technical issue and not a security breach or hacker attack. She said the site should be up later today or tomorrow. You can still write checks against your GMAC account if you need the money, like the one I wrote today to open an account at Zions Bank in Utah. Check out their Deseret Money Market Account at 5.56%! Sound bank (****), according to bankrate.com. Some restrictions on withdrawals originated at Zions ($500 max per day), but they give you checks and you can write any amount on a check. Also, no restrictions on withdrawals originated from an outside linked bank account. Seems worth it for the rate.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:43 am
It looks to me that they let their domain name expire without renewing it, as I cannot ping the name. When I did a whois gmacbank lookup, it showed their domain name expire several days ago. Big time negligence!!!. It will take a long time for all the DNS servers in the world to reregister their name. I forget the term for this process.
September 27th, 2007 at 5:50 am
At first I thought the servers crashed, meaning all data would be lost (if not backed up). But a bank-based website allowing their domain name to expire? RIDICULOUS!!!
September 27th, 2007 at 7:37 am
It is ridiculous! The strange thing is I got a message from them on Monday night asking me to call back. When I called soon after the message, they said their systems were down and asked me to call back the next day. When I did, they told me it was still down. From the next day on the website has been down!! Wonder if the call to me, the system being down and now the website down is all related?!!
Whatever be the case they should let the customers know!! My whole savings is in that account!
September 27th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Actually, their domain expires in Sept. 2008 — a year from now. But still, to have a website down for this long (my experience has been all of yesterday; I did not check Tuesday night) is unacceptable. I’d love to hear their explanation.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:12 am
I guess I’m in the minority. I could access it twice yesterday and again this morning. Haven’t had any problems at all.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Looks like it’s up! (for the time being, anyway — no explanations for the downage so far)
September 27th, 2007 at 8:33 am
I haven’t been able to connect to the site since Tuesday afternoon. Need to do an EFT, but over the phone I need to wait until the account is registered. On top of that you can’t talk to customer reps after 9:00 PM eastern time. Wednesday morning customer service said they are going trough a system uppgrade. I had to end up doing a wire transfer from another bank and pay $20 fees. I’m very dissapointed with GMAC.
September 27th, 2007 at 9:51 am
GMACBank most likely switched servers and is using new IP addresses. The new addresses have not yet fully propagated through the DNS system.
GMACBank is still not accessible via my Verizon FIOS account. I have an open trouble ticket with Verizon on this.
For those still experiencing the outage and who know how to add values to their local “hosts” (or “host” in Windoze) table, you can do a temporary fix by adding:
162.39.177.99 http://www.gmacbank.com
162.39.177.100 secure.gmacbank.com
to the table. This worked for me. It’s best to delete these values when the the new DNS values propagate fully however.
September 27th, 2007 at 9:55 am
GMAC bank is ridiculous. Their web site is down for more than two days! When I called them, the automatic voice system told me the wait time to speak to a representative was two minutes, but the actual wait time was 14 minutes. Their automatic transfer system had problem and telling me that my external account was invalid. I had to talk to a representative to make a transfer. That representative was ridiculous: He said I should try to transfer by myself not through a representative. How can I transfer when the automatic system had error message? Even I explained him about the situation, he still insisted that I use automatic system. I guess now is the time to switch to another bank. GMAC bank is absolutely the worst bank in America!
September 27th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Up until now, I haven’t had any problems with GMAC Bank. I always found their representatives helpful.
Anyway, I’m not planning on moving my money.
September 27th, 2007 at 10:43 am
I agree, this is ridiculous. I’m going to look for a different bank.
I was able to access the site to transfer some funds. I had to temporarily set my DNS server to 199.68.81.81. Instructions can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/sag_tcpip_pro_usednsconfig.mspx?mfr=true. Good luck!
September 27th, 2007 at 10:45 am
The problem was not actually with gmacbank.com Their registrar appears to have mistakenly changed their dns servers with dns servers of another company effectively rendering the site unreachable. Even though they fixed it, comcast, time warner, aol will cache that stuff for days sometimes. Nothing to do but wait it out.
September 27th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
I cleared my browsers cache, and the website works now.
September 28th, 2007 at 5:23 am
A real Verizon tech called me yesterday evening, following up on the trouble ticket I had placed concerning the GMAC Bank access problem. He manually updated the routing table in the DNS server my service uses and access was restored, at least for the time being. We’ll have to see what happens when the router auto-updates the next time. I commented-out the entry I had put in my XP “hosts” file, but left it in place in case I need it again.
The Verizon tech was extremely knowledgeable and very helpful. So often, their CSRs are completely clueless and it’s frustrating to have to deal with someone who knows less about the problem than you do.