This article is from page 10 of the 2008-06-10 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
KILLALOE, one of the most popu- lar holiday and day-out destinations in Clare, was almost cashless at the bank holiday weekend.
The AIB have apologised to cus- tomers who couldn’t get any money from their machine, which 1s the only on-street ATM in the east Clare town. The machine stopped giving cash on Friday evening and was out of com- mission until Monday evening, the end of the holiday weekend.
Traders and visitors to the town had to manage with credit and La- ser cards but some came up against a Crisis.
One businessman said, “First the AIB machine went down so people went up the hill to the one in the su- permarket. That was fine for a while but there was such a big run on that machine that it ran out of cash.
“They got it refilled later in the day, but the only machine that people
could access outside the supermar- ket’s opening time was out of order.
“The place was packed with visi- tors trying to work around the prob- lem and a good number of them had to give up and go elsewhere if they didn’t have a credit or Laser card to pay with.”
In a statement on the matter the AIB said that “due to a technical problem, our ATM service in Killa- loe was unavailable from the evening of Friday, May 30, until the evening of Monday, June 2.”
“We sincerely apologise to our cus- tomers for the inconvenience this caused. We aim to provide the most competitive customer proposition for our customers and our products and our delivery channels are continually reviewed to ensure this.”
“For example, AIB customers can now use their Debit Cards directly at point of sale and can also avail of a cash back facility to access their funds.”