Premier Disservice

My next post was going to be about getting rid of my car and getting on two wheels (that’s a motorbike, by the way), but first I feel I need to vent my frustration. Frustration with Barclays Bank. Now, fuck all the shit in the news with them fixing prices or whatever it is, and fuck all that stuff about the Chief Exec resigning and lining his pockets on the way out the door. I want to go all the way down the ladder to the bottom of the pile, where people like me reside. The greasy little people who live in bins and just happen to have an account with them. Hello.

Right – here we go. A few weeks ago I was in Sainsbury’s getting some shopping. A few tins of beans, some bread, apples etc – the usual. I also nipped in to the petrol station on the way out to fill my motorbike up. When I got to the cashier, and handed over my debit card (which worked fine 5 minutes earlier in the main store), I was told it had been declined. The cashier tried it again and was confronted with a message on the till to call merchant services. She did, and after what seemed like an age being on hold, she finally got through to an operator who requested to speak to me. I was told that my card had been declined for ‘fraud prevention’ reasons, and that I needed to answer some security questions, the first of which I couldn’t answer (the incredible exchange went like this: Operator - “what is your home phone number?” Me - “I don’t have one” Operator - “I’m afraid that’s incorrect”). Eventually, I answered the questions thrust upon me like I was in some kind of real-world version of Shenmue, and my card was accepted and I went on my way (after apologising profusely to the queue of people building up behind me in the petrol station, that is).

The next morning, I checked my bank balance online to see if my rent standing order had gone to my landlord, only to be confronted with a message that my account had been suspended due to a fraud investigation! I rang the bank and spoke to somebody in the fraud department and got my account unlocked (apparently, buying motorbike forks and Dreamcast games on eBay flags up fraud activity with Barclays), but I noticed that because of this overnight block (that I thought had been sorted over the phone in the petrol station the previous evening) my rent hadn’t been paid. Cue another call to Barclays, where I was told that the standing order to my landlord 'couldn’t be found,' so I’d have to set up another – which I did. Now, fast forward to the beginning of this month. I check my balance to see if my rent has been paid – it hasn’t. I ring the bank. Again. They tell me it’s been sorted, but low and behold – another issue arises. The next day, I get a letter from Barclays telling me that I had insufficient funds for my rent standing order and that they’re charging me £8 for the pleasure! I check my online banking thingy and discover that they’ve assigned one rent standing order to a side account I never use, and another to my main account. HOW FREAKING INCOMPETENT CAN YOU GET?! So after another bout of phonecalls and explaining the situation to about 10 different customer services idiots (and, fingers crossed, resolving the issue), I think I’ve decided that I’m going to change banks.

You may think this is an overreaction, but in the weeks between these two incidents, I tried to change my account from a £25 a month ‘Premier’ one to an £8 a month ‘Travel’ account, and was then subsequently placed on the wrong scheme so ended up paying an extra £15 for an account I never asked for. And this is how they treat ‘Premier’ customers with various savings accounts and a fully paid-off loan to their credit. I’d hate to be, y’know, someone who just has a ‘normal’ free account. Jesus. Talk about rubbing your customers up the wrong way – here I was thinking I was ‘always right.’ Pfft. Anyway, the point of this uber-rant is that I wanted to get my tale out to the wider world (yes, I know nobody reads this), for my own peace of mind. I’ve got an appointment at another bank today, so hopefully switching my accounts should be done by the end of the month.