Barclays Bank - BBC Undercover

Well its taken its merry time to come to light but tonight on the BBC Barclays Bank, has been exposed for many dubious dealings. The BBC Whistleblower program exposes the sharp practises that I (and many others) have covered before with regards Barclays Bank Plc and I say a thank you to the reporter Amanda Egbujo for doing this report.

**A bank staffed by Mark Benton wannabe's but without the inteligence, the humour or even the looks of that comedian.

The other year I was mis advised as to regards loan protection and given both incorrect and contradictory information by staff at the Newport branch. Months later and many complaint letters, e-mails and calls/visits to the branch later along with reporting this on my blogsite the following happened:

Barclays offered me 200 quid, they also pointed out that I may face court action if I carried on commenting on them, damage to corporate name etc etc. So fair do's thought I, its not exactly an apology but 200 notes is 200 notes at the end of the day. So comments on their monumental fuck up with regards my account were removed.

However now the BBC have thrown their mal practise into the public arena, my view is that Barclays can take my ass to court if they feel the need. Therefore I state the following with regards to Barclays Bank:

• 1. They gave me a poor service(at best)
• 2. They mis advised me re loan protection and other matters
  
• 3. They imposed illegal charges on my account with regards their errors.
• 4. They offered and have still offered no form of proper redress or apology with regards that.

Anyway onto the BBC program on Barclays:

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.

I applied using my real name, but created a fake job history and used bogus referees. Despite the fact that bank fraud is at unprecedented levels, Barclays made only a cursory call to one of my referees (in fact, my BBC boss pretending to work for a fake company) and did not bother to check if the bogus company I had listed actually existed, or whether I had a criminal record.

Now think about that one for a moment, had she not been a reporter but some criminal type your account could have been cleaned out in a moment. But it now gets better and better, this is how they train the staff, read it and weep.

At the first job interview by phone, I was asked how I would engage someone in conversation and told to give an example of how I had persuaded someone to do something.

At a follow-up face-to-face interview, I was asked how I had sold someone additional items.

I obviously said the right thing and was offered a job. My six-week training course at Sunderland included listening in to other sales advisors selling over the phone, then having my own calls monitored and analysed.

Well it did not shock me more is the pity, just confirmed what I already knew about them. Get the caring manner of the training manager in the section below.

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.

Oh and they even skirt the law with regards customers who opt out from sales calls, maybe a chat to Ofcom might be in order here? They even criticise their own staff for being to nice, not that I have ever come across that problem with Barclays staff being to nice.

To my astonishment, we were even told to 'challenge' people who had specifically told the bank that they did not want any sales calls.

The system works with the help of a computer which automatically telephones customers. Indeed, sometimes mistakes were made and customer who had ticked a 'no sales calls' box were called. We were trained to tell people that we were 'calling to review' their account, so they didn't suspect it was a sales call.

And even if they did, the official attitude was very much: "You have them on the phone, try to sell them something!"

After the training, during my first proper week on the job, I was criticised by my manager for being 'too nice'. She had been listening to my calls and was annoyed that I kept giving the customer too many chances to pull out.

She told me: "Don't give them too many chances to say 'No'."

Reminds me of that condescending woman I spoke to in one of their call centres that finally got me to switch banks. The trainer continues showing the caring values of Barclays below:

"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."

Nice to see high quality customer services in action, hurrah that our interests are protected by the toothless talking shop the FSA.

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

And I am sure it is just as bad if not worse at the local branches, especially Newport city centre branch on Commercial Street.

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.

Yep. Lied to and treated with contempt, that sums up my dealings with Barclays Bank.

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.

Again it bumps up the staff wages, adds to company profits and you can always blame it on a "computer error" - the computer says no person off Little Britain I swear must have been modeled on a Barclays Bank member of staff.

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

I am sure that should have started with once upon a time...

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

Did a similar job years back for another bank myself, we joking referred to ourselves as "pod monkeys"

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

Now why doesn't that surprise me?

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.

Been there and done that, plug products into the call. Its a pain in the arse to be fair, they don't want it and I never wanted to sell the unwanted crap to the customers.

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

The FSA, a cobbled together agreement with so many opt outs, clauses and who are managed indirectly by the very people that they are supposed to be overseeing. They are regarded as a joke by the banks.

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.

Yep sounds like my local Newport branch, a branch that I can not contact directly by the way. Yet Nat West gave me a number for my local branch when I opened an account with them. Hurrah for them and yah boo to Barclays.

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."

And yet it so sums up the attitude of Barclays staff high and low, calls not returned, complaints ignored, errors made, poor advise given. The customer may not be right all the time, but with dick heads like Simon working for the bank it explains why so many of us are leaving Barclays. Oh I would just like to add that I have now managed to get a total of six people to leave Barclays Bank PLC.

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.

Start as they intend things to go on, as I said its an attitude that fills Barclays from top to bottom.

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

Oh yes, never mind what the customer wants so long as we squeeze out the money.

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.

That's about the size of it, I remember one sales manager who used the wank phrase about "Getting on the bus." - when trying to push sales to the staff.

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.

Kerching!

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.

Well thats all right then. After all its all in the customers best interests.

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.

Indeed, as a former customer what I have had to deal with from Barclays Bank, has made me feel uneasy and lose sleep, put a strain on my relationship and otherwise wound me up.

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.

But you are happy to turn a blind eye to the record levels of complaints?

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

Crap. Call me and answer my complaints, rather than stock letters that say sod all except that the matter is being looked into.

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

No, we know you are a bunch of feckless bastards, who treat customers like shit and care not a jot if they close their account. Again call me and we can have a rather long chat about "respect" In the section below the BBC reporter talks about her time at the branch, the fact that customers are just seen as meal tickets and the pressure to sell sell sell!!!

The reason: sales targets. I was introduced to these on my first day in Guildford. Each morning, before the bank opened, there was a 15-minute session, which staff referred to as their 'buzz meeting'.

Each employee was given a daily target - usually of a specific number of products to sell that day. A commission is won for each sale - on a sliding sale according to the importance of the product. A good salesperson could expect to boost their salary by several hundred pounds a week.

At the 'buzz meeting', everyone was asked to itemise their sales from the previous day and log them on a board. These were greeted by applause and whoops - failure by derision and humiliation.

As well as individual targets, there were team targets which, if not met, meant we were said to be letting down our colleagues. My manager told one member of staff that he was "sickened" by his lack of sales.

On another occasion, a low achiever was told to "get into the mindset of an Arsenal player". The manager said: "Do you think Thierry Henry goes: 'I'll try to score a goal today if one comes up.' Do you think that's what he says?"

If such a comment had been uttered by David Brent from TV's The Office, it might have been funny, but it was the manager of a bluechip bank - which returned its biggest ever profits of more than £6bn this year - dealing with millions of pounds of other people's money.

Those staff who regularly failed to hit their daily target were put on a Performance Plan which involved a meeting with management where the under-performing employee would have to outline their strategy for increasing sales then have someone sit in with them and monitor their technique.

Now Performance plans I remember them well, they were a pain in the arse in my former job, if you did not offer stuff it was a plan, in fact plans for this, plans for that and plans for whatever the managers felt like putting someone on a plan for . During that time it was follow the script, don't think and then in for the weekly review to see if you were "on the bus" with the rest of the team.

By this stage, nothing could surprise me, and the response of my manager when I finally handed in my notice spoke volumes.

I told them I was quitting because the sales culture at Barclay's was ruthless. To my astonishment, the manager said: "It's a sales job, bottom line, and it's getting even more so. I came into the bank five years ago and it was a sales job, but hand-in-hand with a customer service job.

"In the last six months, I've never seen change like it - and so quickly. It's going to get worse rather than better."

Indeed and that is why many customers are leaving Barclay's for other banks or building society's. But over to Barclay's for a reply:

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

Well I beg to differ my good man/woman, I have come across many an upset Barclay's customer and the few that I have persuaded to leave your good selves must be the tip of the iceberg. I have saved the best bit till last, here is what the BBC reporter said that she saw:

I saw colleagues petulantly raise two fingers after they had come off the phone to a customer who refused to buy a service they had offered and they referred to them as "t****" and "idiots".

During my three months as a sales advisor, I witnessed colleagues routinely pushing extra services onto customers - desperate to earn bonuses to supplement their starting salary of £15,000.

So nice to know that they care about our day to day needs.

** 23/03-2007 - Update - and I am sure this has nothing to do with the BBC report, seems that Barclay's in their beneficence and tolerance and peace upon their customers have decided to offer yours truly 900 notes in order to close a complaint, and all well and good and I have to say that the 900 notes will be rather useful but the word sorry still seems to be lacking from all of this.

No seriously I would not have pushed half, hell not even one of the many damn complaints against Barclay's that they have created had I been offered a half decent- or any form of- apology, but no they play this corporate bollocks game with customers and well I want and feel that I deserve an apology. I mean is that to much to be asking for is a bank to just say "Look we dropped a bollock and well sorry mate." - seems that in their case it is.

They offer to remove a charge, offer some form of non blame inducing offer to a customer when things go a tad tits up yet fail to use the word sorry under any damn circumstances. So here is the score, yes I have accepted their offer, however I have accepted it on the terms that I have just been paid what I am owed other than a long overdue apology from them as a company. bearing that in mind I shall carry on doing posts on them, still asking for an apology and reporting on their cock ups in the media as and when they happen and still encouraging people that I know to leave the poor bank that is Barclay's(my opinion)

Thinking back on it I would have passed up on the many small payments they have given me on previous occasions, not to mantion charges written off and errors corrected(of which there have been so so so so so many) including the last 200 notes oh and the latest 900 notes, all for want of a decent apology from them as a bank.

Link to BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6476155.stm
Link to Wistleblower site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/whistleblower/
Ye olde links to previous bits: Previous bits on Barclay's and some tags:
http://newportcity.blogspot.com/2007/02/banks-bloody-parasites.html
also
http://newportcity.blogspot.com/2007/02/banks-make-change-its-worth-it.html
also
http://newportcity.blogspot.com/2007/02/cry-freedom-escape-from-barclays-bank.html
also:
http://newportcity.blogspot.com/2007/02/barclays-bank-still-cunts-even-now-i.html
check out this site. http://www.chargeclaims.co.uk/

http://newportcity.blogspot.com/2007/02/cry-freedom-escape-from-barclays-bank.html

http://www.blagger.com/db4/company_id/130/companyname/Barclays.html

http://www.litsl.com/miscellaneous/poor_customer_service/barclays_bank_barc_the_woolwich.html

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Barclays_Bank__Review_5133047

http://www.teneric.co.uk/forums/finance-forum/business-banking-complaints-4719.html

http://www.grumbletext.co.uk/vt.php?t=108

http://www.barclaystory.com/

Tags: Barclays Bank
Banking
Finance
BBC Whistleblower
Amanda Egbujo
Bank Charges

.