You really can´t begin to believe how bad Barclays are in relation to managing accounts (I don´t think the word "customers" has passed their lips for some time).
As previously mentioned, they told us resident expats we had to close our accounts as they had decided not to bother with licences for EU countries. No help offered, just shut it by November. No thought of using offshore accounts instead (although lots of us expats probably have offshore accounts). Compartmentalised and UK-centric.
Anyway, we moved the few payments that were going in, and in a fit of magnamanity, I called them and told them they could close it - but specifically mentioning that I wanted to keep using the App for online access.
Well, as you will have guessed immediately, they managed to close the account and the access to the app too. (Anyone using online access to a Barclays account will understand why I prefer the app, as getting out a chip and pin reader and a current credit card just to complete the log-in process is so bloody old fashioned and cumbersome).
I called the call centre (God save us all from them) and after long wait got through to a pleasant girl who reckoned she could reinstate the App - following problems with it having a UK contact number (which I had only ever used for Barclaycard, and had nothing at all to do with the previous app which used my spanish mobile). But the change "would require 24 hours to be implemented", so call back "in a couple of days".
Dutifully did so, only to find she should have told me 2-3 working days, so wait longer.
Called agin, only to find it would not work. Then they found the first girl had registered my mobile as home line and left the dodgy UK number intact. Start again with 2-3 days wait.
Called again with a feeling I might be a little less tactful.
Friendly bloke who could obviously read voices tried his best, but I knew we were stuffed when he got to the stage of "possible problem with configuration of an iphone 12" bollocks.
Now note that this is not now anything to do with me having or using the app (which worked fine on an iPhone 12), but something to do with them sending an SMS to me authorising the download and implementation - which is obviously a one-off and not to be confused with secure usage.
The call centre guy tells me he can´t see the code "for security reasons" as ever, but only works by an automated system (who designed that crap I wondered aloud?) which can only send an SMS.
I pointed out that my other banks used a combination of email and SMS when I log on, so having such a system just to set up the system shouldn´t be too insecure.
Agreed and noted. He was really getting the picture.
I told him I had an alternate iPad mini device with a different spanish sim card which he could maybe try. I think he added that number as a home one, but hey-ho.
So now we wait again for another 2 or 3 working days while he consults with the tecchies and sees if there are alternate options.
I did point out that I have an email from the MD of Barclays International in my inbox awaiting my reply - after I insisted an early worker registered a formal complaint about the way that Barclays (UK) handled the closure and subsequent activities (only to be told it was a Barclays UK issue - Grrrrr).
Said MD does not know what she has let herself in for - or, more likely, does as it is bound to be a 3rd party handler - but I guess she doesn´t give a toss anyway.
Maybe I will just send this whole blog to her.
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