beware barclays bank customers!!!!

cherokee · 21-03-2007, 22:06

Just watched tonights whistleblower on tv and although thankfully im no barclays customer , im horrified to see just how they conduct business behind the scenes..... ie telling you they are something other than sales staff ,putting charges on peoples account without them knowing . and completely disrespective of the people that put and keep them in jobs in the first place.....anyone else see this?..

Ianto.W. · 21-03-2007, 22:39

They are all the same cherokee, the more business they bring in Ie; insurance usually top tariff companies, high interest short term loans overdaft charges I could go on all night. It has been stated on this site before personal accounts are not welcome in banks unless they can sell the customer something else. Banks make their money out of business accounts 5% over base rate plus bank charges, I can remember paying a total of 20% in charges whilst working on a profit margin of 30% not much of a return for our labours.

cashman · 21-03-2007, 22:58

was reading an article about this down Beardwood this morning, a reporter got a job incognito and was disgusted with the training, there on commision now to get you to sign up for stuff 10% was figure quoted, or change your accounts to one you dont really need with less interest or more charges.

WillowTheWhisp · 21-03-2007, 23:09

It's nothing new. When I was a bank employee over 16 years ago I was sickened by the way we had to push customers into having things they didn't want or worse still didn't need or were totally wrong for them, just to meet targets. If we didn't sell a specified number of each item (insurance, unit trust, etc) then we got a 'pep talk' about bucking our ideas up. I really hated it and was glad to get out. I was talking to an ex-colleague last week and she said she wished she'd taken the option too.

What did surprise me was the fraud and how easy it seems to be. One thing they were really hot on in my day was fraud prevention.

cherokee · 21-03-2007, 23:09

SORRY COULDNT PUT THE LINK IN BUT FOUND THIS....

Mis-selling is 'rife' at Barclays

By Amanda Egbujo
Undercover reporter, BBC Whistleblower

A nine-month investigation by BBC reporters working undercover in a leading British bank has revealed a culture of ruthlessness and lies which will shock their customers.

Barclays recently announced record profits of £7 billion.

With a touch of glee, my bank trainer told a classroom full of call centre trainees that he "loved" getting customers complaining about bank charges.

"They'd phone up, start crying and blaming you and telling you their kids are going to starve. And I'd be like, 'I don't know you - I don't care'. I was just thinking 'you're not getting it back'. I was a right git."

This was an early insight into how life might be working inside a Barclays call centre in Doxford, Sunderland.

I have been undercover in one of the top British banks for the last five months - and it has been an extraordinary experience.

I've seen customers misled, lied to and treated with contempt.

I've seen people charged for financial products they neither asked for or knew they had.

And in a separate investigation I've also seen evidence of bank employees working with criminals to commit fraud.

People know we are a good bank, we're trustworthy, we do the right thing, we treat people with respect

Barclays spokesman

All this in an industry which claims it operates to the highest standards of care and trust.

At the call centre in Doxford I was one of 1,800 people who work day in, day-out selling Barclays' products.

Staff often gave the impression that customer service lay at the bottom of everything we did. But that wasn't always the case.

The lie began the minute we got through to the customer. "Hello, my name is Amanda Egbujo and I'm an account consultant."

I wasn't anything of the sort of course. I was employed as a "sales adviser". But as one of my colleagues told me: "You have to lie a lot," if you want to get into the call for long enough to start selling.

Yet banks are supposed to operate under strict rules imposed by the Financial Services Authority to prevent customers being misled.

'Cynical attitude'

But this cynical attitude to sales - and to customers - permeated every aspect of my work with the bank - both in the call centre and later when I transferred to a high street branch of the bank in Guildford, Surrey.

As my trainer Simon Pickergill said: "I hate it when they say the customer is always right. It's just ridiculous. Someone was stoned when they made up that policy."

Remember this isn't just anyone, this is a man who Barclays had chosen to teach us, the bank's new staff, how to behave.

Barclays, like most banks, has a system of targets and bonuses to encourage its staff to sell.

I hate it when they say the customer is always right. It's just ridiculous

Simon Pickergill
Barclays' trainer

I saw the effects of the ruthless target-driven environment.

In just four weeks in my branch, I saw one of my colleagues break down in tears because of the pressure to sell and I heard about another from a different branch being suspended, accused of a series of misdemeanours - including moving more than £200,000 from one customer's account to another, without permission, purely so he could get commission.

Mis-selling seemed to be rife.

One manager admitted that the bank's "Additions" accounts are one of the "most mis-sold" products in the bank.

Additions' accounts can cost around £150 a year, in exchange for which the customer gets a range of benefits.

They are worthwhile for some customers, but even more worthwhile for the bank - raking in tens of millions of pounds a year.

To encourage us to sell them we are paid a bonus of £10 for each one we sell.

The problem is that if the customer already has an account with us they don't have to sign for the new account.

And as the manager explained it often happens that staff, under pressure to sell, simply give the customer an Additions account without telling them and many may not notice the extra charge on their account for months.

'Not representative'

Indeed just a week after that manager described this to me, I was there when an angry couple came into my branch complaining that just that had been done to them.

Just a few weeks ago Barclays announced record profits of £7 billion.

What I saw there makes me feel very uneasy about how they made at least some of that money.

In response to our allegations Barclays Bank said: "We are not in the business of encouraging or condoning mis-selling or inappropriate sales in any way whatsoever, and we stamp on that when we find it because it is completely inappropriate behaviour for a bank.

"We pride ourselves on being a responsible institution that puts its customers first."

It added: "People know we are a good bank, we're trustworthy, we do the right thing, we treat people with respect.

"I don't think what you've seen is any way representative of the way in which Barclays does business, and I'm sure our millions of customers would tell you exactly the same thing."

Whistleblower - Banks will be broadcast on Wednesday 21 March at 2100GMT on BBC One.

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VIDEO AND AUDIO NEWS
Undercover filming from the Whistleblower programme

cashman · 21-03-2007, 23:12

you will be right willow,probably the only differance today is information is much more available and obtainable.

chav1 · 21-03-2007, 23:14

last time i wa sin my bank the abbey despite tellingthem i was blacklisted and having ccj's they still wouldnt let me leave the bank until i had applied for 2 credit cards they did

all teh bloody same

crooked as hell

shillelagh · 22-03-2007, 01:03

Did anyone tape it - i was in the pub and forgot to set the video

Ber999T · 22-03-2007, 04:45

I was working and wanted to watch it too

entwisi · 22-03-2007, 07:49

Oooo, now how shall I respond to this.

Some of you are aware that I work on behalf on Barclays at the moment and in 2 weeks will be employed by them again. I was originally employed by them when they opened the Callcentre at Salford Quays so I have a fair amount of knowledge of what happens in these places.

IMHO the trainers were absoutely nothing like what has been said ( I didn't watch the program). They were there to train the staff in dealing with what could be complex financial problems but with an eye on the commerciality. i.e. they should be able to suggest the right way for people to deal with a situation. That may have been by selling them a different product to what they already had. certainly at the time I was there there was NO COMMISION WHATSOEVER.

Banks are businesses and need to make money. As has been said before we are one of very few countries in the world that offer personal banking for free if you stay within certain criteria. Outside that criteria the risk is with the Bank that you may abscond, go bankrupt etc and thus charges are applied to cover that risk. Selling you a product is often seen as a bad thing yet you could leave someon earning 2% in an account thats not right for their circumstances and they would miss out on earning a lot more. Which would be right, not selling them teh better product or leaving them in ignorance.

As with all companies. There are rougue employees. I will guarantee that the trainer in Q will be tracked and dealt with. In this case it accounts to gross misconduct so they should be quite rightly fired.

So rightly or wrongly this program could probably be about any company in the country, they chose Barclays as its a brand seen as being a high value target.

garinda · 22-03-2007, 08:41

Slightly off topic, but still regarding Barclay's Bank.

In the 70's and 80's it was the only one, of the then four major UK clearing banks, that had commercial links and interests with the the then apartheid government of South Africa. No student worth their liberal salt banked with them. With a student population of 25,000 students, there was apparently not one student account with Barclays in Liverpool, but then again we were pretty much right on, and also wouldn't dream of buying Del Monte tinned fruit for the same reason.

Incidentally Barclays did pull out of South Africa in 1986, after much international protest, and loss of business

WillowTheWhisp · 22-03-2007, 09:02

I worked for the TSB Ian and although we were not on commission we were under a great deal of pressure to sell, sell, sell. In the days before telephone and internet banking we had this stupid device which customers had to pay £10 for which they held over the telephone mouthpiece and punched buttons on to do their banking over the phone. It looked like an overgrown calculator. You had to make an airtight seal between the end of it and the mouthpiece which was all very well if you had the old fashioned style phone like:

but totally useless if you had a trimphone because the mouthpiece was - well, er, trim!

Even those of us who had tried one at home on our bog standard phones had the dickens of a job trying to get the wretched thing to work - a bit like loading a computer program from a cassette tape, the slightest crackle on the line and the computer (which you communicated with via this thing) misinterpreted your instructions - and yet every time a customer came in with a general balance type query or a "Has my wage gone in yet?" type question we were supposed to get them to cough up a tenner for this ludicrous thing which we knew wouldn't be any use to them. If we didn't sell a set number each day we were called to account for why not. If people came in to complain that they'd got one and it didn't work we had to convince them that it was their fault, they were doing it wrong.

I hated the thing and I hated having to con people into buying one.

garinda · 22-03-2007, 09:02

Whilst looking up the year that Barclays were forced to pull out if apartheid South Africa, I sadly came across this article about how Barclays are now helping to fund the regime of that charming dictator Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

Looks like they still put profits before principles.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world...000349,00.html

flashy · 22-03-2007, 09:07

last year i lost my purse in manchester, i cancelled my bank card whilst i was still in manchester(ive had an account with barclays since i was 15) i then went to the bank in accy and spoke to some silly cow called catherine who said my card would be back with me in a few days.....i got the card and couldnt use it for 2 weeks cos the stupid bitch had disabled my pin number without telling me,her explanation for this was she hadnt realised she'd done it, i wasn't a happy bunny and made a complaint to the manager of the bank

WillowTheWhisp · 22-03-2007, 09:07

I was also very much aware of people being persuaded to cash in their monthly unit trust linked life insurance cover savings plan thingies (I forget what we called them at the time) and reinvest the "lump sum" and then take out a new monthly plan. This made it look like we had sold 2 new products when in fact what we had done was much worse for the customer because the plans were loaded with charges at the beginning so they had a whole new bunch of charges to pay - but also because they were now older by 5 or 10 years the amount of life cover they got for their same monthly installment was considerably less - and yet some members of staff convinced people that this was beneficial to them.