It has been said that "July 1, 1998 is the start of Fiscal Year 1999 in 44 of the 50 states".

Has there been any feedback as to the effect of this event?

-- Dave Jones (dfj@fea.net), July 02, 1998

Answers

As of a matter of fact yes! Today I received my Discover credit card bill and I called the company regarding it. The clerk said that all the computers were down and they can't answer any questions on any bill and they were sorry for the inconvenience. I asked her if this was a Y2K problem. She said that they are calling it something else, but I was on the right track. She was being careful cause all conversations are recorded for training! So, there you go!

-- Barb-Douglas (bardou@yahoo.com), July 02, 1998.

My Visa Card was rejected twice on 7/1/98. Called about it the next day and was told that there had been a "problem" but it was now repaired. Never had that happen before.

-- Cynthia Conant (cmconant@humboldt1.com), July 04, 1998.

Jul-1-98 my webtv (internet access) was down.When it came up, The Microsoft logo had been added.

-- Arthur Rambo (buriedtreasure@webtv.net), July 04, 1998.

Was at a lumber yard yesterday and the man in front of me at the checkout said his Discover Card had not been working but was OK now. He said the machine printouts looked like Arabic. Also looked at the computer used for processing merchandise. Up in the corner was the dd/mm/yy format for the date! Wonder if that place even has a clue?

-- Annie (anniegaff@mailexcite.com), July 04, 1998.

The "Discover Card" computer system failed back in early to mid June. It had little to do with 7/1/98. I'm sure El Nino~ will be glad when "Y2K" takes over the blame for every kind of oddity this country encounters. Geez people, let's not start blaming every little quirk on "Y2K"!

-- Anti fools (Anti_fools@usa.net), July 06, 1998.

"Anti Fools" has a point. Let's not blame every little glitch on Y2K. My opinion here, I doubt we'll see any big problems this year... and I have some doubts about problems caused by fiscal year calendars. But I do expect disruptions in January 2000; actually, I expect things to start "happening" about the time of the GPS rollover in August 1999.

Then again, if the problems y'all mentioned were Y2K-related, they got fixed in a hurry and that gives the "no big deal" crowd some ammo.

-- Larry Kollar (lekollar@nyx.net), July 06, 1998.