Total bankers!

So this is about Barclays - never a good starting point - and it's about 2 cheques, a hamper of luxury food, some peurile excuses... oh and a rather fabulous definition of paying taxes.

So here's the gig. I wrote 2 cheques to 2 people at the same time. I put them in 2 envelopes at the same time. I popped them in the post box at the same time. A week later, one of the recipients contacts me and tells me that her cheque has been returned because MY bank says it has no record of there being an authorised signature on my account to allow for cheques to be written.

Now I've had the account for nearly 20 years. The bank - with superb timing - has sent me a new cheque book just that morning. And best of all, the second cheque has been cashed with no problems whatsoever. So I contact Barclays to be given some drivel about not having a signature - WRONG!, not having enough money in the account to cover the cheque - VERY WRONG!, my not being allowed to write cheques over a certain amount - WRONG, and ignoring the fact that that cheque that was cashed was for a larger amount! Finally - and inevitably - we got to the comfort blanket of all things crap: The Computer!!!

None of this washes of course, but I finally flip when they tell me that in fact the second cheque - the one that has been cashed! - has not been presented yet and that the bank is unable to guarantee that it will be cashed when it is presented - "assuming that it is presented sir, or indeed that you did write it in the first place!". That last point was a nice touch I thought - nothing like an implication of senility to appease an irate customer.

But on being told that Barclays has so little management and overview of my account that it can't even tell when a cheque for several thousand pounds has been presented and cashed, I flipped. Nuclear option. Armageddon in a banking hall. The full hissy fit, volume turned up to maximum, let's scare the other customers type of thing.

So a day later, it's all been escalated to some senior CRM bod somewhere in the upper echelons. He still can't offer any explanation for the utterly ludicrous scenario, other than a vague attempt to justify their ineptitude by insisting that they don't have up to date contact details for me. This is also rubbish as they manage to send bank statements to me, cheque books to me and he's just managed to phone me without me giving anyone my contact details! (Do they not stop to think about basic logic before they start their blame avoidance activities?).

The end result is hamper of luxury food send to 'compensate me' and the removal/payment of banking charges to both me and the person I wrote the cheque to, Barclays having of course decided to charge me for informing me about their own incompotence. Still the hamper was nice and it'll come in handy for the weekend, so there you go I thought, I'm in a good enough mood, let's chalk it down to experience.

Until I went to Woolworths!

I went to Woolies to buy a DVD. It cost £9.87. Precisely. I handed over my charge card. It was declined. The shop assistant was told that she had to contact Barclays Fraud Detection and to retain the card until she had spoken to an advisor. The hamper is no longer a happy thing in my mind. Instead I am in a queue in a shop with other customers listening in while a teenage shop assistant talks at the top of her voice about fraudulent activities.

Still she hits the call centre number. Fifteen minutes later we're finally put in touch with one of Barclays finest security brains. She takes me through a few security questions - inside leg measurement, DNA profile, electoral voting record, that sort of thing! - then told me that the card had been declined for my convenience because my account had been frozen for my own safety as there was "a highly suspect payment" that had gone out of it.

I'm vaguely concerned at this point so I ask her what she means. Apparently an epayment for £12,000 was processed, she reads from her prompt screen I see, I say, incredulous and yet splendidly livid at the same time. And the recipient of the £12,000, the highly dodgy and suspect individual who's been siphoning off these vast sums of of my hard earned money? The Inland Revenue, she declares, triumphant in the basking glory of her Marple-esque deductive powers.

So let me see, I try patiently. As a security expert at a global financial services giant, can you see any connection between the last week of July, self assessment, the Inland Revenue and a payment to the same? Or to a payment which took place at the end of January this year and also at the end of July last year? Nope, she said, mystery to her - and seemingly to The Computer (hurrah, The Computer is back!!!) which has declared it potentiallly fraudulent.

Now paying tax to the Revenue is many things, but 'It's fraud' is not an argument I feel is likely to win much of a sympathetic hearing with Chancellor Brown....Still I like the idea of a global bank deciding that paying my tax on time like a good citizen is worth freezing my bank account for and raising a security alert in the process. Nice one!

So here I sit today, flabbergasted and yet somehow unsurprised at just how incompetent Barclays is capable of being and occasionally looking out of the window to see where the next hamper is!

But when the postman comes, all he brings is a letter from the bank. They've noticed I've got 'rather a large sum' in my account and would like to suggest that I open a new account on a special offer rate to 'maximise my return'. If I'm interested I'm to call a certain number and speak to a certain woman. I'm curiously touched that she wants to talk to me now as she was too busy to take my calls when I had a complaint to make. Or to see me when I went into the branch and waited half an hour for her to find a window in her schedule. Perhaps we will be friends now. Or perhaps we won't.

But let's leave it on a positive note with a customer management lesson that you can all take away and learn from. Having considered it all very carefully, I would suggest that the lesson to take away is this: Incompetence- think of it as a great opportunity for upselling!

Stuart Lauchlan
News & Analysis Editor
stuart.lauchlan@mycustomer.com