White Sun of the Desert

Finally, after 3 years of trying, I am getting shot of Barclays bank who for the past 13 years have handled all my banking matters.  When I was in the UK they were fine, but when I transferred to their international banking in 2003, they have been nothing but useless since.  I wrote a post in April 2007 describing their shortcomings and the period since has seen a continuation of much the same sort of stuff. 

For example, when I was in Thailand in June I found my card had been blocked, despite my calling them to put a holiday marker on the account (this happens all the time).  When I called up what passes for customer services, they told me the card had been cancelled and a new one issued, supposedly on my request (which was nonsense).  Naturally, the new card hadn’t been sent to me due to Barclays not wishing to pay for a courier and instead preferring to hide behind unfounded security concerns as soon as the word “Russia” is heard.  So I was left drawing out cash on a credit card until I returned home, whereupon I was told that the woman on the phone had misinformed me and the card wasn’t cancelled and that it should now work (it did), which was 4 weeks before Barclays called and confirmed it had been cancelled due to a banking error.  Barclays would save time and money by informing their customers only when they haven’t made an error of some sort.

So it now looks as though I am transferring to RBS, the main reason being that they have a branch in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk following their takeover of ABN-Amro.  I am a little suspicious of how much help this will be, especially when my experience of HSBC in Dubai cooperating with HSBC in the UK was less than impressive (oh, they’re nothing to do with us!), and every time I’ve gone into the local RBS branch here I’ve been greeted by a row of blank faces saying “ya ne znayu“, but I know the branch manager and he’s helped me out in the past, so I’m hoping it will be an improvement on Barclays.  It can’t be much worse.  So far, RBS say they can send cards to my address in Russia, which has always been the biggest problem (with HSBC too, I believe).  I’ll wait to see if this is true, but at the very least they should be able to send them to the branch.  Can’t they?

Anyway, to open an RBS offshore account I need to show them the last 6 months statements from my current account.  Unfortunately, Barclays typically cocked up my changing of address and have been sending all the statements for my GBP account to an old address; the statements for the USD account, which in theory shares the same address as the GBP account, have been reaching me fine.  RBS accept online printed records, but for some reason which indicates a level of uselessness impressive even for Barclays, their online banking system can only display the last 6 weeks of records.  That’s right, Barclays online banking cannot show you what happened in your account 2 months before.  So I rang up and asked them to send me the last 6 months statements.  Of course, this was not possible: according to Barclays it is illegal (which I doubt).  In fact, nothing is possible in Barclays, I don’t know why I bothered ringing them up in the first place.  Their motto should be “Sorry, we can’t do that!”

I was advised to go and visit a local branch and ask them to call an Isle of Man number so they can then fax my statements across.  Fortunately, I am in London for a couple of weeks, one of the main reasons being that I can finally change my bank having failed to do so from Sakhalin (this current experience is demonstrating as to why).  I asked the woman on the phone if she could contact the Aldgate branch of Barclays and fax them across and I could go and collect them.  Apparently she couldn’t, because the UK branches were “nothing to do with them” (perhaps she’s ex-HSBC!) and they have awful trouble getting through to them.  Ah, much better to let the customer negotiate such obstacles!

So I wandered down to the Aldgate branch and handed a youth in a turquoise tie the number he needed to call, which he did.  20 minutes later, he is still waiting to be connected.  It seems Barclays’ internal system is as crap as their external customer service desk.  Eventually somebody answered and after another 10 minutes, something arrived on the copier/fax machine across the room: 10 blank sheets of paper.  The blithering idiot on the Isle of Man had put them in the feeder the wrong way up.  There was nothing for it but for Turqouise Tie to call again, which meant another 20 minute wait for somebody to answer.  I asked him why he didn’t call her direct line, and he told me she doesn’t have one, and nor does anybody but the most senior people.  And he couldn’t email her because nobody has an email either, even branch managers.  That’s right: Barclays branch managers don’t have an email address!  No wonder they are so utterly useless at responding to and solving customer issues, they spend all day on the phone listening to tinny music waiting for somebody to pick up.  No wonder Barclays refuse to email me scanned copies of my statements, the clowns don’t have an email account to do so!  Eventually something with writing on came to the copier/fax: 10 poor quality sheets indicating in an appalling format my transactions over the past 6 months.  No, wait: from January ’09 to July ’09.  The woman who cannot load paper into a fax machine also cannot understand the meaning of “the last 6 months”.

And these idiots want to manage my financial affairs.  Let’s hope RBS is even marginally better.

My application to open an offshore bank account with HSBC has fallen flat on its face.  In order for somebody resident in Russia to open an account on the Isle of Man, they need to have an opening balance of 60,000 Pounds Sterling, which despite my status as cigar-puffing oilman, I do not have.  The reason why they demand such a high opening balance for Russian residents (the normal requirement is 5,000 Pounds Sterling) is because of the risk of “money laundering”.  And that is about as detailed an explanation as I could get.

What is interesting is that HSBC do not advertise this requirement anywhere, it is simply a decision which gets made at the application stage.  Personally, I think the explanation is bollocks.  Anyone wanting to launder money from Russia is probably not going to be doing so in small amounts, and I can’t see how a 60,000 GBP opening balance is going to do anything to discourage such activities.  If anything, putting a maximum balance on the account would be more of a control on money laundering rather than a minimum balance.

I reckon that certain elements within HSBC have no interest in getting involved in private banking in Russia, and really can’t be bothered having to deal with new customers who have set up there.  On the basis of anecdotal evidence, they appear to have enough trouble providing a decent level of customer service to their existing clients who have moved to Russia, and the last thing they want is to have to deal with new clients there as well.  So they come up with a flimsy excuse of “money laundering”, which always sounds good alongside the word “Russia”, to ensure they don’t need to deal with any of it.  Call me cynical, but I strongly suspect that were I to come up with 60,000 GBP tomorrow there would be another reason trumped up as to why the account couldn’t be opened.

So, HSBC is not going to be getting my custom.  However, their senior management is going to be getting a letter from me detailing my personal circumstances, my desire to move from Barclays, and my disappointment at HSBC not showing any interest in getting me on board as a customer.  I have a suspicion, only a small one, that somebody somewhere down the chain of command has made an arbitrary decision about certain things which the CEO would not want advertised.  The number of expatriates moving to Russia is only going to grow, and if HSBC has made the decision that they don’t want their custom, it’s probably one which won’t sit too well with some of the shareholders.

Tomorrow I’m off on holiday to Singapore again, this time for a couple of weeks and taking my wife with me.  We might go up to Malaysia for a few days in the second week to get some snorkelling in, but we’re undecided on that.

One thing I am not undecided on is that when I am in Singapore I will attempt to do what I should have done several years ago: leave that pathetic excuse for a bank called Barclays and join HSBC, whose offshore banking service would have to be pretty damned poor to be worse than Barclays’.  Sometimes I wonder if they’ve staffed their customer service department with Sakhalin Islanders.  Since I emigrated in June 2003 and was able to conduct all my financial affairs through the Isle of Man and out of range of Gordon Brown’s fat, greedy mitts, I have unfortunately been a customer, or dupe, of Barclays Private Clients International.

Since June 2003 up until today, Barclays have done the following, which is not an exhaustive list:

1.  Sent an unsigned debit card addressed in its entirety to: “Timothy Newman, Dubai”.  Like I’m the Sheikh, or something.

2.  Sent several PIN numbers for my online banking service to the Middle East, none of which worked.  It took a couple of months before I could access my account.

3.  Kept an old online banking service account live when it should have been closed.  It was possible to make payments from my current account using the old online account for at least a year.

4.  Sent a debit card to Dubai which was cancelled before it ever arrived.

5.  Operated a helpline dedicated to its international customers around UK office hours.

6.  Charged me $55 per time to transfer $815 from a Barclays USD account on the Isle of Man to a Friends Provident USD account on the Isle of Man.  Barclays considers this an international transaction, and charges accordingly.

7.  Failed to act on an instruction to cancel a standing order for 4 months, helping themselves to over $200 of transaction fees in the process.  After several hours of international calls to Barclays, they agreed to pay this back.  After several more hours of international calls to Barclays, they actually did so.

8.  Blocked an ATM card without warning on numerous occasions after falsely saying they’d tried to call me to ask if the card was being used fraudulently.

9.  Told me that there is nothing they can do to avoid a card being blocked when used abroad, even if I have called them up to tell them I am going to be using the card abroad.

10.  Told me that it is “impossible” for the daily withdrawal limit on my ATM card to be set to exceed £300.

11.  Stated that they would be in breach of the law if they were to fax me copies of my own bank statements.  This is a lie: other banks manage it without being prosecuted.

12.  Chastised me for not warning them that I was using my card in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 8 months after that had been my residential and correspondence address on record with Barclays.

13.  Sent me umpteen computer-generated apology letters encouraging me to give them more feedback without providing an email address or fax number.  The only way to give them feedback is to make a lengthy international phone call which will be dealt with by the very people you are complaining about, or to write a letter and post it across the world.  They end the letter by telling you that if they don’t hear back from you within two months, they will assume you are satisfied.  I’ll try this approach to my clients and see how far it gets me.

14.  Demonstrated that the bank is run for the sake of their employees, not the customers.  Umpteen obstacles have been put in place to prevent the employees having to do anything which might involve thinking, effort, or leaving their computer/phone terminal.  Most requests are met with a whining jobsworth saying “I’m sorry sir, but we can’t do that, our policy doesn’t allow it”, as if the policy is imposed on Barclays by some higher being without their consent.

15.  Failed to call me back on all but one occasion that I asked, a failure rate of about 96%.

16.  Cost me several hundred dollars in international phone calls trying to persuade Barclays’ staff to solve routine problems or getting them to undo major problems of their own making.  Requests to have some of this expenditure refunded were simply ignored.

17.  Set up their telephone banking system such that the account management, debit card management, and credit card management are in three different places managed by three different groups. 

18.  Demonstrated beyond doubt that they are either utterly incapable of running an international banking service, or they simply don’t want to.

ABN AMRO customers are going to be in for a nasty shock if the Barclays takeover goes ahead.  Barclays should prepare itself for a barrage of calls from grumpy Dutchmen. 

I can’t understand Barclays.  I don’t know much about how banks profile their customers, but at a guess I’d say I’m one worth looking after.  I’m working in the oil and gas industry, not known for its meagre salaries, and at age 29 made it to General Manager of the Sakhalin region of a services company.  I don’t have a mortgage yet, but it should be obvious that I will within the next few years, not to mention a requirement for all sorts of other investment vehicles, insurances, and financial products Barclays claim they offer.  And I send a not insignificant amount of cash by way of my salary each month into their vaults, which is looking good to increase handsomely and continue for the next couple of decades.  What’s more, I am surrounded by fairly wealthy expatriates most of whom do their banking offshore, not to mention that I manage a few of these and will likely manage a whole load more in the future and will be in a position to advise on a lot of the financial decisions they make.  In short, if Barclays don’t consider me a customer worth looking after, what type of customer are they after?  I don’t think they have a clue. 

So I’m off to Singapore, the reknowned hot bed of capitalism, to do that most capitalist of things: booting an incompetent supplier off the job for ever.  Now I don’t know if HSBC will be any better, but as I said, I doubt they could be any worse.  We shall see.