back to article Capita payments service Pay360 goes TITSUP

Capita Pay360 service, which allows small businesses and councils to accept online transactions such as paying parking fines, has gone down in the UK and Ireland due to a "major incident" in its data centre. In an update sent to one customer at 4:15pm BST this afternoon (May 25) and seen by The Register, Capita said remedial …

  1. Nash

    Double whammy.

    Incident affecting capita - CHECK

    Incident affecting the payment of fines - CHECK

    Seems like good news all round.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Double whammy.

      >Incident affecting the payment of fines - CHECK

      I bet the system for sending out threatening letters for late payment still works perfectly.

      :-(

  2. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Facepalm

    Outrageous!

    Privatise it now!

    Oh, wait...

  3. ecarlseen

    Major payment system that has a single datacenter dependency?

    What could possibly go wrong?

    1. Mark 110

      Re: Major payment system that has a single datacenter dependency?

      Well . . . its Crapita. Always on the cheap. Not their fault tbh. They just do what their contract says. What they are paid for. Though I would be having alot of fun with their account manager right now if their contract requires them to maintain a DR capability and can restore service within 2 hours.

      Guessing it doesn't. I am working with a client right now who has a contract with a hosting provider that says they are not obliged to continue to provide services if there's a disaster. The guy in the business that signed that keeps querying whether we should be spending money (i.e. paying me) on looking at this stuff instead of working on his next pet project.

      You cannot win!!

      1. Kernel

        Re: Major payment system that has a single datacenter dependency?

        " The guy in the business that signed that keeps querying whether we should be spending money (i.e. paying me) on looking at this stuff instead of working on his next pet project."

        In a previous role I used to come across something similar - people who'd leased long-haul capacity cheaply because it was premptable and were then surprised and angry when it was prempted for restoration purposes during an outage on another part of the network.

      2. Tom 7

        Re: Major payment system ..contract says

        You do realise most of the contracts are largely written by the contractor? The government save us money by getting rid of the decent lawyers who can spot a loophole the size of the earth in a contract and the contractors run rings round those left.

        1. Fred Dibnah

          Re: Major payment system ..contract says

          There's a great description of this in the current Private Eye podcast, 'Page 94', all about the NHS.

          http://www.private-eye.co.uk/eyeplayer/podcast

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Major payment system that has a single datacenter dependency?

      To be fair* I wouldn't bother implementing full multi-site DR for a fines payment system, or anything similar. That stuff is expensive. Extending the deadline of fines affected by a couple of days is not.

      For those small retailers who are being screwed, one can only hope they or crapita are insured against the lost revenue.

      *Crapita, fair, ahaha etc.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Major payment system that has a single datacenter dependency?

        "For those small retailers who are being screwed, one can only hope they or crapita are insured against the lost revenue."

        Being insured doesn't help much it your business has gone down the tubes by the time the claim goes through.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "...services all together in one place"

    Ahaa!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "...services all together in one place"

      And to cap it all off Capita Exchange servers are also hosted in the same data centre. So when the Incident Management team swing in to action, whats the first thing they do..... Yep send emails DOH!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not only used by councils

    I understand that Pay360 apparently supports Paypoint services for certain (unnamed) utilities.

  6. Steve Foster
    Joke

    Clue in the Name?

    Unlike Office365, this one might have been more accurately named based on the annual uptime...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anyone checked other Capita services ?

    Has anyone wonder why the Congestion Charge system is also not taking payments?

    I wonder who run those services for TfL ?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The fact that Crapira gets these contracts shows what a bunch of fuckheads the competition is.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "The fact that Crapira (got to pull you up on the spelling there AC) these contracts shows what a bunch of fuckheads the competition is."

      I'm not sure that's true, Capita are well, you know, a bit crap, but the system is set up to award and reward them and their ilk.

      Lots of companies could do better, most won't get very far in the bidding process.

      Boys looking after boys and all that...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    pay360?

    And that's why it's called pay360 and not pay365

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I work in a Capita owned business and our office365 emails have also been down since yesterday afternoon. Somthing about a power issue in a data center.

    1. Kane
      Thumb Up

      "I work in a Capita owned business and our office365 emails have also been down since yesterday afternoon. Somthing about a power issue in a data center."

      Needs more Hamsters!

    2. Locky

      Something about a power issue in a data center not paying the bill

      There, fixed that for you

  11. defiler

    Register headline generator

    Capita something something... Something something titsup.

    I mean, seriously, do these guys get anything right?

  12. defiler

    "We are working hard to restore these services as quickly as possible."

    ...but the flights from India are pricey, so it'll be a while before we get staff into the DC...

  13. Mike Shepherd
    Meh

    Euphemisms

    "...we continue to treat this issue...major issue...Once this issue is resolved...some of our customers have experienced technical issues"

    It's not a problem, then? Just an "issue" (or maybe a "challenge").

  14. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    "due to a "major incident" in its data centre."

    That's OK, just use one of the other sites, after all that's the beauty of "The Cloud" isn't it?

  15. pauleverett

    obviously Brexit

  16. liquidmini
    FAIL

    TITSUP

    Taxing Inability To Service Unrelenting Public?

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