Barclays Avios Rewards – can anyone report a good banking experience?

[Flier33]

Putting my struggles with them aside for now, can anyone report a good experience with the bank – as new customers performing the current account switch for Avios account?
I’m currently at HSBC Premier and can’t recall any issues at all (ever).

[Froggee]

I was delighted. I switched from my secondary Tesco account when Tesco exited. I plonked £100k in and after a few weeks got a call from a lovely lady in Glasgow. She established that Barclays would be my secondary account and I wouldn’t be paying my salary in and that I had no interest in any of their products.

I’m in the process of drip feeding the £100k into investment trusts so at 10 basis points for that service I’ll be paying approx £100 for an upgrade voucher. And I like having a backup account. And who knows, one day being able to take £1,000 out of an ATM might be handy.

Since then I’ve heard nothing which is perfect.

I got my 25k bonus Avios, occasionally use the App which is clunky but functional and rarely use the web version as it is barely functional.

But everything works as it should.

HSBC remains my primary account though.

[Flier33]

Froggee wrote:

I was delighted. I switched from my secondary Tesco account when Tesco exited. I plonked £100k in and after a few weeks got a call from a lovely lady in Glasgow. She established that Barclays would be my secondary account and I wouldn’t be paying my salary in and that I had no interest in any of their products.

I’m in the process of drip feeding the £100k into investment trusts so at 10 basis points for that service I’ll be paying approx £100 for an upgrade voucher. And I like having a backup account. And who knows, one day being able to take £1,000 out of an ATM might be handy.

Since then I’ve heard nothing which is perfect.

I got my 25k bonus Avios, occasionally use the App which is clunky but functional and rarely use the web version as it is barely functional.

But everything works as it should.

HSBC remains my primary account though.

Thanks, I guess it worked out having a 2nd account to switch from. May leave this one as a secondary…

[Dudulle]

The account switch was the easy part.
I first began the switch from the app, didn’t even fill any details and stopped to do it later, after that the bonus was already showing as pending in my account. I still did the switch later and the bonus still pending but the terms do say that it’s sent after 4 months.

Now the difficult part was opening the account.
The app displayed an error twice at the last step. Third time it tells me to verify my id in a branch.
Next day or so I could see 2 new accounts when logging in with my Barclaycard…
Anyway, going to a couple branch (London) I’m told I have to take an appointment for this (earliest 6 weeks later). I did manage to get an appointment online a few days out at the only branch that takes appointments online though. There it all went well, I’m told I didn’t actually need to verify my id but they took my documents for future reference and setup my account correctly.

A couple weeks later, I’m asked to verify my id again (for real this time). Calling customer service, I’m told they do have my id documents but they haven’t been processed and only the person who saw them in person can do this. Thankfully they sent an email to that person and it was processed the next day.

So all in all, good experience for switching and with customer service. Cannot say the same for opening the account, going to a branch as a new customer, and their IT.

[JDB]

Froggee wrote:

I’m in the process of drip feeding the £100k into investment trusts so at 10 basis points for that service I’ll be paying approx £100 for an upgrade voucher. And I like having a backup account. And who knows, one day being able to take £1,000 out of an ATM might be handy.

Glad to hear someone else mention investment trusts as a number of people here insist index funds are the default/only possible investment solution when they are the road to nowhere and OEICs/unit trusts may also not be ideal in turbulent markets.

[Froggee]

Well I do kind of know what I’m doing. For those who don’t, my inclination is regular savings into index funds is the best strategy. Obviously the most important part of that strategy being to keep paying in no matter what. Don’t bottle it because markets wobble.

And find a fund on a platform where the total fees are as low as possible.

Most people and many intelligent people have near zero interest in investing. You understand that not everybody is wired like you @JDB? I find it staggering this is the case but then I’m like you. But kind of your second cousin who got the being-annoying gene rather than the autistic gene.

Back to finances. I did an MOT on my brother’s finances. He has pretty much done all the right things but has multiple fund platforms and some more expensive (index) funds.

Having passed his MOT I gave a follow-up recommendation to switch out of some of the more expensive funds. From memory, this would generate a saving of just over £1,000 per annum. A year on. Nothing.