Terrible customer service

[hattie43]

I have tried 4 times to get through to Barclays Bank customers services with no success .

Today I was on a mission . Held on one hour 15 mins , heard the music the whole reel and then a voice says we cannot connect you please try later .

AIBU to think something is going badly wrong at the moment . Why are customers treated with such contempt by some companies . I'm sure Barclays isn't alone .

Surely answering the phone is a basic .

It's the post Brexit and lockdown world. Everything is back to "normal" except a version of normal that is slightly more shit than it was before.

I’ve just spent 47 minutes trying to change my address on my Barclays account. Their complaints service rang me, after we had tried to change it online, by post, by phone for THREE years. We wrote and complained to complaints, to the ‘local’ branch, to the managing director….nothing. Finally we wrote to the banking Ombudsman. We got this call where we went round in circles for best part of an hour. Although they claimed
a) that they had never received a letter ( so how did they know to ring on the new landline, the one connected to the new house?)
b) that it was against ‘security’ and data protection to send me a letter confirming that they had changed my address, which, of course, they hadn’t.

all the other financial institutions we deal with changed the address without too much hassle three years ago. Barclays are the worst bank I’ve ever dealt with, as soon as my parent doesn’t need their account anymore, we will never deal with them again.

Barclays are dreadful. We're only with them because our mortgage was sold to them- prevously with Woolwich.

There's a theory about in the industry that customer service costs to much for too little reward.

Basically, these days you can provide excellent customer service, but that doesn't convert to loyalty. All customers are interested in is the cheapest price or best deal, lowest rates..and as consumers, we can't have our penny And our bun.

No-one wants to 'pay' for customer service,

Additionally, a lot of service providers are moving all of their support online, to extensive FAQ's and live chat options, to cater for a 24/7 customer base where you can provide links to websites, documents etc.

Anyone who provides a support service will tell you phone calls are the least efficient, least productive way to resolve a problem, and that way of communicating is often used by people who are , quite frankly, lazy and haven't tried to resolve the issue by themselves using the online support provided.

The argument that some people don't have access to the internet or are not technically good enough to do this doesn't really stack up, and if you are of a certain age or have a disability then most firms operate a scheme to register for where you can access phone support.

TL,DR - Phones are the least resourced support option from support providers, as it is the least efficient way of resolving an issue.

Every month our pay goes in the same day direct debits go out. Every month I get "insufficient funds" texts as it triggers something in Barclays' stupid automated system even though the funds are actually there, and when I open the account, all the payments have gone through and we're in credit.

@Rosehugger The "outs" are processed before the "ins" - always have been.

You could always change the date of the DDs if it is really upsetting you.

I've had 56 minutes this week as a record for me with Santander. I've always said how good their customer service was but since covid it has totally gone to cock. I honestly couldn't say what the issue is , too many calls, too few staff? This was3.30 on a Wednesday. Too many WFH and working but slotting in picking kids up?? (Don't have a go- it was just a thought) - can't recruit due to mainly offering only full time roles? How about having extra on at just 12-3 (would suit a lot of mums) or 6pm to 9pm (would suit second jobbers/students etc ) it's easy saying it can all be done online- but when you've paid a large payment out and it hasn't hit the other persons account you need to get to the bottom of it- with 'a person'

Anyone who provides a support service will tell you phone calls are the least efficient, least productive way to resolve a problem

the problem is the FAQs never answer your specific question, and they deliberately do things like let you sign up for a service online, but not cancel it. They hope you just won't bother to cancel, but it of course means you have to phone. If they really wanted to eliminate phone calls except for specialist things like eg dealing with when someone dies, they'd put everything online.

Not this bad. Boots always used to have at least two staff on the pharmacy counter, one dealing with prescriptions and the other selling the behind-the-counter medicine stuff.

Now they have combined both counters with just one person serving the whole queue, and you know what it's like when somebody has an issue with their prescription, it takes ages.

Try HMRC. Or don’t bother waiting 45 minutes to be told they’re busy, sorry.

Friend hung on for 1 hour 40 minutes to Direct Line the other day to discuss a possible claim on his travel insurance. They cut him off. Mind you he had more success than I did as my travel insurance company didn't have a option to speak to a person just told me to go online. I did that but got a generic reply which did not answer my query - neither did their FAQ's to which their message referred me. It's a total shambles.

Read your banks T&Cs.

In it would explain that debits are done before credits.

The way round this is to ensure your DDs are taken out at least 2 days after your pay goes in. So if you are paid on the 21st your DD should go out at the earliest on 23rd.

HMRC messed up my self assessment, then penalised me.I phoned them for over an hour for an entire week but couldn't get through. I wrote to them, detailed everything and they penalised me and charged me £10 per day. Today I spent 2 hrs on the phone waiting to get through but finally got sorted out. If they responded to letters there wouldn't be the same pressure on their telephone lines.I wrote to them in February and they've never replied.

This.

Dread having to phone a company up. Most of them don't take on enough staff to cope with the call volume.

AIBU to think something is going badly wrong at the moment

Absolutely not OP. The pandemic & Brexit = lots of redundancies and foreign workers moving elsewhere.

So many industries and company’s now have a major staffing problem. Call centres, aviation, NHS, retail - are struggling to fill up vacancies.

A lot of companies are using the “covid” excuse for long waiting times and/or poor service.

It doesn't cause an actual problem for them to come out the same day, other than the stupid texts. I prefer them to be on the same day so if there is a bank holiday they will still all come in/out on the same day, so I know where I'm up to. The thing that annoys me with these texts is that when there was genuinely insufficient funds and I could have transferred money to cover it, it didn't alert me and I was charged.