Barclays = *****

And people keep trying to get me to shift from TSB… Well, Barclays are definitely not one I’ll be going to. OK, so I’ve only signed up to rip some money out of them (have two grand in the bank after the first two months and they give you £100 which you can then take and deposit back in your real account), but it’s no excusing the **** service I’ve had so far.

First off, I got all the bumph in the mail. Cheque book, welcome letters, offers of loans, applications for credit cards. The usual ****. In amongst it was a letter telling me to expect my debit card and PIN within 7 days. 14 days later and no sign of either. Worrying. OK, so there was no money in the account, but they’re the two things you really don’t want someone to have.

So I gave them a call, and a nice polite young girl (sat in India, naturally) told me I wasn’t getting a debit card and one had never been applied to my account. Well, OK, she didn’t tell me. The person three forwarded calls along told me. I was advised to pop into the branch where I applied (I applied online) to sort it.

*sigh*

Well, no problem. I have no intention of doign anything other than transferring the cash electronically back to TSB anyway.

Next, I set up internet banking which was OK apart from the usual bollocks of getting another immemorable “membership number”, another passcode, another set of passwords and memorable phrases… All of which I promptly forgot once I’d set it all up and locked myself out of the system.

Whoops.

So I called their online helpline. After 2 minutes of selecting options on the phone menu, none of which was really relevant, until I got a recorded announcement telling me to call back between their opening hours of 7am and 11pm.

It was 10:55pm. By my reckoning, that falls between those hours.

I called this morning at 8:55. When their systems were updating, as they do every morning apparently, and told to ring back in half an hour. It’s a really good job I don’t have anything actually urgent to do or I’d be ******.

So. Barclays = *****. Simple as. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.