Thanks Barclays…

I cannot understand if this email that Barclaycard (it’s not a scam, the email really comes from them) sent me is a sick April Fools’ joke or what:

Dear Mr Barisione,

You were recently upgraded to a Barclaycard Cashback card.

As you’re registered with mybarclaycard to manage your account online, we’d like to let know about a technical issue that means you will not be able log in to your account. We’re working to resolve this issue, but it will take until 1st June 2010.

[…]

If it’s a joke I want to stop using their services, if it’s not do they really need 2 months to fix this issue? This plus receiving fraud prevention phone calls every time I use the Barclays debit card in a shop (it happened three times in the last two weeks, twice just yesterday) and getting the transaction blocked makes me really want to change bank.
Suggestions for a decent bank in the UK? For now the only suggestion I got was Nationwide.

9 thoughts on “Thanks Barclays…”

  1. I also used to be in Barclays but I got so pissed off by the bad service I moved to HSBC.

    I haven’t got a problem since.

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  2. nationwide is certainly the less incompetent of the bunch – it helps not being a bank but a building society. I have my mortgage with them, and they have been painless to deal with.

    the barclaycard division of barclays is composed by utterly incompetent cocks that should all be fired out of a space cannon and straight into the sun. I’ve had to deal with those idiots and they made me want to gauge my eyes out with a rusty and dull spork.

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  3. Definately first direct (technically the branchless version of HSBC, but you can use their branches if you want). All online and on phone, never had a problem, in about 15 years.

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  4. When I was in the UK I used Smile, the online service from the Co-Op Bank. Being a lefty pinko liberal I tend to go for building societies (or the co-op bank, which is more or less the same), and they were okay. No eye-gougey moments, at least. Don’t remember the online service ever being down for very long, and it was pretty well designed.

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  6. The Co-operative Bank. Their pure-online brand Smile is basically the same thing, but I can’t recommend them enough.

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  7. Just to echo the support for the co-op, never had a problem with them yet. Moved there a few years ago after HSBC changed the terms of my student account at a most inconvenient time.

    Nationwide does have the advantage that I think they don’t charge for overseas atm usage.

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  8. second first direct, if you see what I mean. Been withthem over 20 years and can honestly say never had a single problem, and ypu always get a reall person, in leads I think. Pluse they have a deal were you get 100 pounds if you join and like it and 200 pounds if you join and dont, and they say they will help ypu move to a different bank.

    Good luck.

    PS recently had problems with barclays when trying to get a new credit card from them, sent the Id stuff they asked for after first ringing them to check ot was OK and Then had the application turned down because the ID data was Wrong. Phoned them again and was told that yes they admited they had asked for the wrong stuff but not to bother sending th eright stuuf for 6 months as that was the min. period after a rejection…huh!!! nedless to say I got the new credit crad from else were

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  9. I once worked as an independent consultant trying to advise Barclays and Barclaycard on how to best improve their online banking services, Unfortunately company politics and internal inertia and red tape meant their IT department were unwilling to move one finger to improve anything.

    I have been with HSBC for both business and personal accounts for over 10 years and can most definitely recommend them.

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