The telecommunications issues businesses in the Prairie Creek Plaza experienced in recent weeks were caused by vandals.
Police are investigating after someone broke into a storage room at Prairie Creek Plaza earlier this month and damaged the telecommunications system, which police say affected multiple businesses in the complex.
Sundre RCMP Cpl. Ryan Hodge could not confirm if this is linked to the hundreds of compromised bank cards, which happened the same day.
The break-in happened between midnight and 1 a.m. on Aug. 12 and hundreds of bank cards, belonging to members of Sundre financial institutions, were compromised later that morning.
Hodge did not release how the telecommunications system was damaged.
“There was other problems with bank cards following up that day, over the next couple days at least, but nobody else (business-wise) was affected (outside of that complex),” said Hodge.
“There hasn't been actually any known thefts from those bank cards or anything like that. It looks like a lot of the banks were just taking preventative measures. It may be tied to this, we don't know, because the banks won't disclose that.”
Jessica Nylund, manager at Kodiak BBQ & Deli, said the phones, Internet and Interac machines were down at the business that day.
However, Dianna Jenkins, manager at Pharmachoice, said that business was not affected at all.
“Ours was fine. It was the other drugstore, they were compromised,” said Jenkins.
Lisa Miner, front store manager at Pharmasave, said staff members were only able to accept cash or cheques from customers.
“Our pharmacy runs on Internet. Whenever you need adjudication, it comes through over the Internet,” said Miner.
She explained that adjudication is what allows coverage plans to be processed.
“Telus had people in here right away looking at them (the lines), so it didn't take long for them to have someone out repairing them, but it was quite a mess back there.”
Nicole Cameron, employee at V&S Options, said the business suffered as well.
“They (lines) were all snipped, every one in the building, so we didn't have debit or telephone or anything,” said Cameron.
Marty Mennear, co-owner at Sobeys, did not say exactly where the lines were snipped, because he doesn't want people to know where the lines are, to prevent such a situation from happening again.
He did say lines were snipped on the morning of Aug. 12, which caused the terminal to shut down at Sobeys.
Each of the above businesses affected was back up and running later in the afternoon that day.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Sundre financial institution clients were replacing their bank cards.
Nicci Doyle, branch manager at the Mountain View Credit Union in town, said roughly 250 to 300 members of the branch were affected by a compromised point of sale terminal at an undisclosed business in town.
These members had used their cards at the business. She contacted each of those customers immediately to advise them to have their cards replaced.
Monica St. Dennis, branch manager at the ATB Financial in town, said she also contacted about 250 members that morning to advise them to have their cards replaced. However, she has since confirmed that no cards were actually compromised.
Jenifer Kleinknecht, assistant branch manager at the Bank of Montreal in town, said members at the bank were also affected and needed to have their cards replaced. She explained that if a card is compromised, it means that no one has access to the account.
Young Song, manager at Jokos Convenience Store in town, said people were not able to use any of the above bank cards at the store from Aug. 12 to Aug. 14.
Meanwhile, during the same week, transactions were being duplicated at Sobeys. However, it was happening across Canada at various Sobeys locations and was an issue with the service provider, Paymentech. Mennear said this had nothing to do with the compromised bank cards.
