CLEVELAND, Ohio-- JPMorgan Chase on Monday was hit by significant outages at its branches and throughout its network, leaving customers unable to access their accounts or money in some cases.

The problems were reported to be the worst in New York, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Florida and Seattle.

"We're experiencing some slowness on our system today," spokeswoman Trish Wexler said Monday evening. "We're aware of the issue and hope to have it back to normal shortly."

Chase said the outages were resolved Monday evening after at least five hours of frustration for some customers. "Sorry for the stress," Chase said on its official Twitter account.

Wexler did not respond to a request for the cause of the problems or how severe the effect was in Northeast Ohio.

Chase is the largest bank in the United States. It is the eighth-largest in Greater Cleveland, with 5 percent of deposits, and the second-largest in the Akron area, with 13 percent of deposits.

The bank's explanation on its web site seemed to be misleading: "We're making a few improvements to our site right now," the message said. "So, some of your information -- including balances -- may not be up to date, and some services may not be available. Thanks for your patience."

The online explanation went on to say that customers can't schedule any bill payments, transfers, wire transfers or QuickPay transactions.

Issues such as these -- especially the day before a holiday -- emphasize the need to have deposit accounts at more than one bank.

Monday evening, Chase said any deposits made to checking or savings accounts would be processed as normal and would be available today.