Beleaguered bank Northern Rock’s website failed to cope with the number of visitors it received over the weekend.

Panicked customers rushed to access their online account details following news that the bank had borrowed £2 billion from the Bank of England, but many complained they were unable to access their accounts.

"Northern Rock appears to have taken no account of the problems with its website," one customer told the BBC. "Their chief executive has said all the time that it's business as normal but with their website being down it's been far from normal for us online savers."

Some disgruntled account holders accused the bank of deliberately shutting them out of their accounts to dissuade them from withdrawing their savings.

This prompted the Financial Services Authority to release a statement explaining that the website downtime was a result of "the unusually high volumes of customers trying to access their accounts as a result of the publicity surrounding Northern Rock.”

The crisis of confidence has caused shares in Northern Rock, which has been particularly badly affected by the US sub-prime lending fiasco, to plummet 24%. Executives are reportedly now in take-over talks with other high street banks.

Further reading

The 10 worst web application failures (2003)