Today, an outage of the system that processes EBT cards forced tens of thousands of Ohio residents to abandon their grocery carts both virtually and literally.
To understand the real problem this has caused for so many, we need to know exactly what happened and who to blame.
The problem became apparent just before noon today, according to Down Detector.
This chart shows the current reported issues as of the time of this writing.
Currently, the downtrend can be interpreted as either because the problem is slowly being fixed or because people have realized there is a problem and have stopped complaining.
The chart below shows a portion of the US that is currently most affected by the EBT outage.
The issue is the processing company and not the state of Ohio.
In 2013, a very similar incident happened. In that case, the processor was Xerox. That outage affected 17 states, including Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
In 2013, the outage lasted about 12 hours. At that time, The USDA released the following statement about the problem: “EBT cards in a number of states have temporarily stopped working (Saturday) due to a technical issue that the vendor that serves these states is experiencing. The vendor is working to fix this issue and EBT cards will work again once it is resolved.”
In June of 2022, Ohio joined several other states to sign a new contract for EBT processing services with a company called Conduent State & Local Solutions, Inc. Conduent uses another large company called Fiserv to assist with retail processing.
Neither company’s website nor Twitter page contained an official statement. Probably too busy working to chat.
There has also been no response from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
Therefore, it’s large corporations with government contracts that dropped the ball on this matter. This is not your personal account. Importantly, your friends and neighbors are not trying to make your life miserable because they are having a bad day at work.
UPDATE
In the early hours of Monday morning, consumers began using the EBT system again. Southern Ohio, as a whole, appears to be much better than central Ohio, where customers continue to experience problems.
Online purchases through Walmart, which is processed through Fiserv, are going through without many complaints.
Although the problem is far from over, it seems there has been some relief on the local level.
