Yay for Barclays!

[tamaranth]

No, you read that right ...

They made me laugh today.

After nearly a year of refusing to admit that there could have been an error in their automated 'phone banking; after a series of letters thanking me for taking the time to share my disappointment; after failing to close one account, applying charges for sending me statements after I'd emptied it, and then charging for the unauthorised overdraft incurred by those charges; after refusing to waive overdraft fees on my father's account when Plymouth City Council took a post-mortem payment; after grudgingly refunding the overdraft charges on my business account "as a goodwill gesture*" and providing the requested apology only as a banking reference on that payment ...

... today I received two pieces of mail from them.

One was the final statement on my father's account (forwarded, as a touching final gesture, from my previous address -- despite all the trouble I took to inform them of that COA).

The other was this leaflet.



I laughed so hard that I was incapable of 'phoning to demand my immediate removal from their mailing list. What with my narrow escape not being a customer any more.

*a definition of 'goodwill' that I would be arguing at length via the Ombudsman ("I think you mean 'as a last-ditch attempt to cover up the bank's utter incompetence'"), were I not so sick of the whole fandango

Comments

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I had a lot of trouble with Barclay's telephone 'help' lines - which are manned by people who do not know the answers to complicated questions and who keep transfering you to someone else who doesn't know.

If/when I pay off the mortgage I have with them, I'll be off to Alliance and Leicester in a flash, as they're top of the recommended list at present. (I think they currently offer around 5% interest on their current account... and you can pay in cheques at the post office as well)

Incidentally, if you don't already, use internet banking - whichever bank you're with - it's massively easier than telephone banking and you have control over what is transferred and when and it's dead easy to cancel standing orders as well.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I've been using internet banking since FirstDirect introduced it -- but when I opened my business account, it needed to be with Barclays as (a) FirstDirect didn't then offer one and (b) I was spending all my lunch hours in Barclays, trying to become a joint account-holder on my father's account.

Looking back this was a mistake :)

Business account is now with Abbey (free business banking, interest, internet banking: highly recommended, and I pay in my cheques by post). Sticking with FirstDirect for personal account, they seem remarkably error-free.

One advantage of telephone banking is that it's sometimes easier to make a phone call than it is to get an internet connection. The initial problem with Barclays wasn't their (appalling) customer service, but the fact that they lost a money transfer in their menu-driven, automated phone banking system. It only went wrong once, but that was enough ...