Admission, aggression, incompetence and £3 billion profit - hurrah for Barclay's winning formula!

OK, this has to be a personal best (worst) for me in terms of customer service. Nearly eight months from a first complaint to any attempt to deal with it and when it is dealt with, the 'resolution' is an admission of error and cock up from a bank, immediately followed by a demand for money with menaces! Admission, aggression, arrogance and incompetence in one neatly typed letter - that takes a particular brand of customer service skill.

It all started last November when I decided enough was enough with Barclays atrocious attitude to its customers. (As you'll see, this is a self-affirming tale!). I opened a FirstDirect account and they contacted Barclays in order to transfer over all my standing orders/direct debits. This was all completed satisfactorily on 9th December.

In January, I noticed that one payment hadn't gone out of my account. Not my mortgage or my mobile bill or anything like that. No, the direct debit payment that Barclays hadn't bothered to process was a loan repayment to...er, Barclays themselves. I went into my local branch and pointed this out, was assured it was on oversight, wouldn't happen again etc etc.

Come February, it did - inevitably - happen again. This time it was accompanied by threatening calls from Barclays Collection Team who said I was now in arrears and about to be put on a credit blacklist. I went back into my branch and pointed out that the direct debit instructions still hadn't been processed by them, this was all their fault and what were they going to do to resolve this? There was a vague attempt made to pass the buck by insisting they hadn't been given the details of my new bank account, but this was shot down in flames by an audit trail from FirstDirect.

A bank customer service person at the branch made some calls in front of me to some mysterious higher authority. It's been happening a lot, was the thrust of her reply, and you're not to worry about it. There's been a cock-up, there's a backlog, we'll sort it out, the Collection Team will be told not to bother you again and we'll write to you once we've sorted it out. This, I felt, was unlikely to be the case and so I insisted on making a formal complaint there and then and having it logged.

That was early February. In the absence of any replies, I went into the branch a few times to chase this up but was told that because there was a formal complaint lodged, there was nothing they could do to help me, I'd just have to wait for a reply from Retail Banking Customer Relations.

February passed.

And March.

And April.

And May.

And June.

And July.

Then, on 7th August, they finally wrote to me with their response. Someone who styles herself a Customer Relations Manager at the bank sent me a letter in which she admitted that the situation had arisen through "human processing error" at Barclays end and that "an error has occured on our part". She said the monthly payments would be reinstated from now, the direct debit was back up and running and all would be well. So far, so good.

Then she seamlessly moved into the 'money with menaces' bit. My account was 7 months in arrears, she told me sternly, and this debt had to be cleared at once. I had to contact the Collections Team and make a payment or - and this was the really nice touch you have to admit from someone who's just 'fessed up to it being their fault in the first place - I would remain on a credit blacklist that I had apparently been put on despite the Collection Team being told to take no action back in February. So, our Relationship Manager's view was, in summary, it's our fault this has happened, we admit it's our fault this has happened, now give us a large lump sum immediately or we'll trash your credit rating.

She then sublimely topped this up with an offer of £50 in compensation for my trouble (the 'if we bung you £50, will you shut up and go away?' payment presumably) and an assertion that this was the final correspondence on the subject. The fact that it was also the first correspondence on the subject seemingly didn't bother her. She added a final sweet touch when she stated that "based on her findings" - ie: the findings that it was our fault - that my complaint was judged to be "partially upheld". Partially upheld? What would Barclays have to admit to in order to fully uphold a complaint? The mind boggles.

Anyway, she assured me that Barclays takes all complaints seriously and welcomes feedback. By this time I had some rather choice feedback to feed back, so I called the Leicester telephone number on the letter to talk to the CRM lady in question. After a tortuous hour talking to someone in Mumbai (inevitably given the customer service team is in Leicester according to the letter!) I was finally given a number to call in the UK. That was on Monday. I called her twice on Monday and was told on both occasions by a colleague that she'd get back to me urgently. I called again on Tuesday. One of her colleagues sounded appalled when I went through the letter, said she'd made it a priority and that the lady in question would call me back that day. She didn't of course. Finally on Wednesday morning she called back. (She doesn't work on Mondays or Tuesdays, she explained, I should have been told.)

I got nowhere with her fairly quickly and asked for her supervisor who is apparently currently examining my case. He's going to call me back today apparently. I said that was fine as I had another call to make to the Financial Ombudsman's Office to do anyway this morning and a column on appalling customer service in banks to write up. I await his response this afternoon...

In the meantime I note that Barclays made £3 billion profits. No chance on any of that going on training up their CRM team I suppose?

Update: Going to the top does work. The CRM team supervisor has done his work and everything has been put back on track - in theory. I'll reserve full judgement until I get it all in writing and the credit report damage is undone, but it's looking better. But the point remains, it took 8 months, many many hours of my time and a lot of stress before common sense prevailed. That £3 billion could still be spent well on preventing others having to go through the same hell.