Online bank Cahoot knocked out for days

The online bank Cahoot appears to have gone offline. It's apparently nothing to do with the financial crisis, but rather the result of a power outage in Spain, where the parent bank Santander is based.

Reader Darren has sent us the following email:

Hi,

I would like to report that Cahoot's website has now been down for 2 days, leaving customers like me unable to access their bank accounts other than through telephone banking - which of course is itself deluged. In addition, not all transactions are possible through telephone banking.

Clicking Login at www.cahoot.com redirects to https://www.cahoot.com/banking_maintenance.html

This, in addition to their non-participation in the 'Faster Payments' scheme, is really poor service for an online-based bank.

It leaves one wondering whether in affect my deposits have been 'frozen'? They deserve to be named and shamed.

Regards,
Darren (in London)

And here's the email that Darren and other customers received:

Dear Customer,

We apologise that cahoot.com was unavailable yesterday and today (Wednesday 15 and Thursday 16th October).

The site will shortly be up and running and you will be able to see any transactions you made up until 7.30am yesterday (Wednesday 15 October). Any transactions on your account made after that time will have been actioned but may not display yet so please don't worry. These should be updated over the next 24 hours. Any payments set up to go yesterday or today should be processed as usual.

Once the site is back online and you access your account today, you will be able to use your account as normal. However, transactions may not display instantly but they will be updated over the next 24 hours. Please bear with us as we bring the website back up and running. We are working as quickly as possible to do this.

Cahoot is part of the Santander Group one of the world's most successful and well-capitalised banks with nearly 70 million customers and remains a safe place for your money.

Once again, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

If you would like to take this further please contact us on 0844 9000 900 and we will help you.

Thank you for contacting cahoot in Coventry.

If you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.

Well, reports suggest the downtime is the result of a power cut, rather than being an indicator of anything scarier. The site is still not up and running, however, and given the wider picture (Icesave etc) this is certainly lousy timing to be alarming your customers in this way.