Barclays and Customer Service

I expect people to make mistakes, but I expect them to put them right fast and to handle complaints well.  Wake up, Barclays, and smell the scent of Northern Rock!  I hope you all take this personally, because your jobs are at stake.

In October I opened what I instructed Barclays to open as a joint account with my wife.  We did everything right.  Everything.  Copies of passports, the lot.

In November I discovered that they had opened the account in my name only.  This means that, had my wife and I fallen out badly during that period Barclays would have taken her money and given it to me as sole account holder.  Interesting, huh?

I complained.

The complaint was meant, according to their letter, to have been answered by 19 November.  I called them last night.  Apparently they wrote to me on 18 November apologising for the delay in issuing my wife with a debit card.  Not that the letter has actually arrived.

That's very sweet of them, but she doesn't want a debit card.  She and I want a full answer to our complaint about the lack of opening a joint account.

Wrong complaint, then.

So I explained this with patience to the very pleasant lady who answered in the call centre and asked for it to be handled at once.

She could not even promise a callback today!

Oh, the copies of the passports?  It appears from the letter that they have been lost because it says that we will have to go again into the branch to present them.  Interesting.  If that is so they have not safeguarded our personal data, which, under the Data Protection Act 1998 they must do.

What is the point of offering customer service out of office hours if you can not do anything out of business hours?

There is no F in Customer Service with Barclays, it seems.