The bank has a lot of branches throughout the UK (although mainly in England) which is useful. They also have good links abroad, meaning you can use your cash card when travelling and not spend so much on commission fees. However, their rates are not great, and their service (in my experience) can be quite incompetent. I'm sure though, that the same applies for most of the other high street banks. Personally, I'm a big fan of internet banking, and now mainly use IF.
Used to have an account with Barclays, but they messed me around so much that I ended up closing it. Customer service used to be a lot better, but really got worse over the last few years. I opened an account with Smile (www.smile.co.uk) and they have only made one mistake in two years and when I pointed it out (they might be an Internet bank, but you can always get someone on the phone quickly) it was fixed in under 20 mins. Excellent stuff!
Their customer service centers are packed with illiterate fools who twice now have referred me to my branch and when I get there I found they should have done it over the phone.
Nationwide are much better... if you can get a german bank account...
I used to bank with barclays untill they overcharged my business accounts by 3k (supposed to be free banking for the first year) had to get the banking ombudsman onto em to get my money back... as for my current account I didnt have an agreed overdraft and had a direct debit for 5 quid go out.... it would have made my accout 2 quid overdrawn, they bounced the payment, charged me 25 quid and then 10 quid for sending me the letter!... nice eh??
Similar scenario with nationwide, they phoned me up and asked me if i would like an averdraft to cover it!... hmmm... Barclays also like to lend 18 yearolds lots of money the bank knows they cant afford to pay back ,then when they get into trouble offer them consolidation loans and bomb them with ridiculous interest rates. i work in the armed services and see it all the time with some of the younger members lads... abey national are just as bad (same group of companies)
best bank in my experience for business;
HSBC or Deutche Bank
Personal banking:
Nationwide building society - Really good interest rates too and the members own it not a blue chip.
investment for stocks shares etc:
Lloyds TSB
avoid them. im sure most banks are crap (altho my friends have accounts with the co-op and seem to like them).
they gave me bad advice on filling in a form for an international transfer (£35) which then dint work because the staff said 'yeah thats good' when there were mandatory fields left empty.
should it be refunded? barclays gave me the advice, barclays should pay for the cockup. seems reasonable
when i returned to make the transfer again the manager passed the buck numerous times, claiming that 'barclays international' were responsible for taking the charge so he couldnt refund it, then claiming he would waive charges for a 2nd attempt, then saying it was out of his hands, then saying waiving the charges was at his discretion so wasnt he a nice man, then saying (when i revealed that i had ticked a box that required any charges to be taken off at the receiving bank's end) that he no longer had any say in the issue and it was out of his hands.
so what - now you just get to keep the money from the first transfer even though it was your cockup. i mean, you were going to (try) to waive charges for the 2nd transfer altho it was not your call (or was it?) so i should just forget about it? oh no no... the ombudsman's getting a letter about this
Do not go near Barclays. They are thieves! I tell them I do not want an overdraft but they say Im entitiled to it for free. Then when I go £5 overdrawn they charge me £30! They'll then continue to charge £30 per day for a max of 3 days until the overdraft is cleared. So now my account is £95 ovedrawn when I only spent a fiver! I've rang them up plenty of times, but 9 times out of 10 you'll end up speaking with some indian who barely speaks english and is impossible to understand. Their customer service is the worst of its kind. They have branches everywhere which you'd think is a good thing, but requesting anything more complex than withdrawing money or paying in money, they will tell you that this can only be done at your branch. And dont even try to ring your branch, they dont exist - you'll get put through their useless call centre based in bangladesh! Im moving to Natwest and they have been brilliant so far. Really helpfull and really freindly - thats not much to ask.
I am so fed up with their service!They are incompetent and very slow in serving the customers.Don't ever make the mistake to open an account in Barclays!HSBC are much better.I recomand them.
I have a business acc which turned over £250,000 in the 1st 6 months. One week just after making a large purchase and paying my tax (today) I needed a 2k overdraft for 1 week. They wouldnt give it because I had not had my account for 1 year, nor would they discuss any options. I googled barclays suck tonight and got this site. I'll be closing my account the next time a large payment comes in.
I went to Natwest and they said if I show my statements and close my Barclays account they would give me a 10k overdraft on the spot. Hell yes they suck.
Choosing Barclays is maybe the best choice, but I have a friend that used the services of those guys here opening offshore bank accounts in the UK, and they have on-site other nice Banks in which you can open a bank account as a non-resident in the UK. Here: <a href=http://traveltowork...;TravelToWork</a>
Barclays is the only shitty bank i ever seen in my life, they are closing some ones account without any notification even if you got handsome amount in your account.
In Many cases not even barclays head office have the answer against your queries, they got some some shitty banking system in place and to hide drawbacks of their system they are always saying that case team will contact you to investigate your query but they will never contact you (Barclays Utter Bull Shit)
Bloody
Arrogant
Ridiculously
Callous
Loyal...
Are
You
Serious
Other than that.... I've been with barclays for 15 years as have my family. We have put through over £3.5 mil through barclays in that time. I opened a personal account with them and they refuse to give me ANY overdraft as THAT account had only been opened recently.
I was astonished, theres no hidden info i haven't reveiled, its as simple as that. I cannot see how they operate in the least!
I am moving to RBS on the advice of varying associates, I used to work for them and know the system, heres hoping as a customer though they treat me better than Barclays.
Obviously a sucker for joining barclayas in the first place
