After getting extremely annoyed with incompetent Barclays telephone banking support staff in India re the unauthorised charges for a cash withdrawal, I decided to go into my local branch in Clacton-on-Sea, I explained to the nice chap at the reception desk what the problem was, excessive charges and how I'd wasted an hour on the phone to idiots in India who weren't able to help at all.
He was very supportive, tapping away on his computer, closing the account for me and taking all my details, including chequebooks, cards, PIN sentry and taking the account information to transfer the money into etc. I left the Clacton-on-sea Barclays bank feeling satisfied that you have to sort things out in person.
I was totally wrong to trust them. Two weeks later, nothing, no money transferred. Regretfully I pick up the phone and call them, the usual bollocks from the indian call centre, and suprisingly, the account is still active, which proves yet again a bank hasn't followed through on the instructions I gave them. I've had similar problems in the past with counter staff not bothering to process a change of address TWICE - so nothing suprises me know about their levels of incompetance.
To make matters worse, the support staff member says she can't see the "closing account" team's information on the account, so she can't tell wether its been closed or not without calling them, what kind of a dumb IT CRM system does Barclays use if they can't even look up the "status" of the account. So I'm put on hold while she tries to call the other department - she comes back to me saying nobody is picking up her call.
She's going to call me back... hmmm lets see its 14:40 when I finished the call... lets see what happens.
So yet again the bank gets to keep my cash for yet more time, and of course they'll send me a cheque, and again they keep it for even longer while that gets processed.
Its about time a new bank came along and introduced proper customer service and a decent customer orientated approach and kicked this lot into the 21st Century - they seem to think they can just get away with incompetance.
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