Food stamp system restored after 17-state crash

People in California, Ohio, Michigan and 14 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.

Xerox announced late Saturday that access had been restored for users affected by the outage, hours after the first problems were reported.

"Re-starting the (Electronic Benefits Transfer) system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality," spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an e-mail.

An emergency voucher process was available in some of the areas while the problems were occurring, Wasmer said.

Shoppers left carts of groceries behind at a packed Market Basket grocery store in Biddeford, Maine, because they couldn't get their benefits, said fellow shopper Barbara Colman.

Illinois residents began reporting problems with their cards - known as LINK in that state - on Saturday morning, said Januari Smith, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Smith said that typically when the Electronic Benefits Transfer cards aren't working, retailers can call a backup phone number to find out how much money customers have available in their account. But that information also was unavailable because of the outage, so customers weren't able to use their cards.

California's program, known as CalFresh, also suffered outages. Recipients normally access their benefits by swiping their Golden State Advantage EBT card at point of sale devices. Benefits are redeemable at over 80,000 food store locations across the state.

In Clarksdale, Miss. - one of the poorest parts of one of the poorest states in the nation - cashier Eliza Shook said dozens of customers at Corner Grocery had to put back groceries when the cards failed Saturday because they couldn't afford to pay for the food. After several hours, she put a sign on the front door to tell people about the problem.

"It's been terrible," Shook said. "It's just been some angry folks. That's what a lot of folks depend on."

Wasmer said the other states affected by the temporary outage were Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.