Benefit Blockage

The Electronic Benefit Transfer program (EBT, Foodstamps) came to a screeching halt yesterday.

Any person who entered a store and expected to pay with an EBT card was stunned to find out that their cards didn't work.  Their cards weren't coming up saying there was nothing on the balance; instead, the message came up saying that the whole program was uanavaible.

Local grocery stores were quick to start making calls, to find out if it was a local issue or if it was statewide.  Soon, the stores discovered that the problem encompassed the entirety of Pennsylvania, along with several other states.  Then, the stores realized that the problem was nationwide.

Soon, ever store and business that accepted EBT had signs plastered everywhere, asking customers to be patient but not gather groceries until the problem was resolved.  As of late yesterday, the problem still hadn't been sorted out.

These stores became close to deserted during the day, as employees realized just how many of their customers use these EBT cards everyday.  Business picked up later, after about 5:00 when most people get off work.

By Sunday, the problem seemed to be sorted out, as Pennsylvania's Access cards were working again.  People continued to call into the stores, to verify if they were working again before venturing out.

You can read the real report here.

But here's the real question:

What happened?

When stores called up their various numbers to get a hold of someone, they were told that it was a networking error and that everything would be back up in at hour.  That was about at 1:00. By 8:00, everything was still shutdown with no end in sight.  Could it have been part of the shutdown?

Many people thought that the Electronic Benefits program was supposed to be put on hold during the shutdown, so could that have just been catching up? Why not warn everyone on the program that there could have been a sudden stop during their upgrade, if that's what caused it?

You see, this isn't the first time this has happened.  A couple months ago, the EBT program went down again, out of nowhere.  Walmart alone reported losses in the millions, and local stores struggled to get everything put back.

So, when it happened this time, employees simply rolled their eyes and said, "Not again."  This caused customers that expected to pay with EBT to become very unruly, and apparently turned them to theft in several Walmarts.  You can see more here.

The Impact

It is simply astounding to see how much of an impact this error had.  People were near rioting, and I experienced this happening first hand.  I was working customer service, and I had to try to keep the people calm.  They outraged and fumed, furious that their welfare wouldn't be paying for their food that day.  I felt worse for the children that wouldn't be getting their dinner that day, because of this glitch.  I was also amazed at the bulging carts that lay abandoned everywhere, as people left them when they couldn't pay.

Thankfully, my store didn't suffer any losses, at least food wise.  We moved quickly and got all of the cold items back in their coolers before they went bad.  I'm sure some stores suffered losses as the mass exodus of people left hundreds of dollars of items just laying around.  Hopefully, we won't have another glitch like this in the near future.  Twice a year is more than enough.