ANZ’s pledge to make internet banking “easier and consistent” hit a major snag on Monday, after the bank’s newly launched online systems suffered a meltdown.

Thousands of ANZ customers were locked out of the online banking platform when they tried to log in to the network from around 8am.

By mid-afternoon some customers were still waiting for the bank’s technology experts to stabilise the system.

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At 5.20pm the bank announced on its Facebook page that internet banking services “were starting to come back up”.

“It may be a bit slow to begin with as we experience higher than usual activity so please be patient,” ANZ told customers on social media networks.

It appears that the bank was unable to fix the new “integrated” system, revealing that it was reverting to the old interface for small business customers.

Retail customers were on Monday night pleading with the bank to also revert to the old personal banking service.

“Please revert the personal customer interface as well, not only is it such a waste of space, you have changed its perfectly good operation,” an irate customer told the bank.

The bank launched the new system on Saturday, which it billed as a “significant upgrade” for its 2.1 million online customers.

The new system is meant to provide an integrated method for customers to access their accounts via mobile devices, tablets and personal computers, with the bank last week promising it would deliver a consistent and easier-to-use service.

However, frustrated customers berated ANZ on social media for the outage and for not providing regular updates on progress made to fix the system.

Here’s a taste of the feedback that customers gave the bank on its Facebook page:

Many customers also disputed the bank’s claim that its goMoney platform for mobile phone banking users was restored to full service at around 1.30pm.

Customers also panned the bank for launching the new internet banking network so close to the end of the month.

Personal customers and small businesses complained that the bank should never have gone live with the new system because many had bills due to pay on the last business day of November.

Several customers were concerned that these bills also included payments they had to make to the bank, which they now feared might attract late payment fees because of the spluttering systems.

Many businesses complained that they were unable to process monthly wage payments to their staff.

A bank spokesperson apologised for the inconvenience caused to customers.

“Our internet banking site experienced some technical issues today and was offline while we worked to fix the issue,” the spokesperson said.

“While it’s back up and running it may be slightly slower than usual as people try to log on at the end of the day.”