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I signed up for Premier banking through the app on Friday and was quite impressed that the account was opened instantly and was showing me all the premier options on the app. Initiated the account switch to bring over my old account. Shortly, my account was locked out as some process in the background kicked off to merge my mortage and avios creditcard to one profile. Sunday over the phone, they resolved it. I was back on the app with all premier options enabled. I signed up for Avios rewards on Sunday itself. On Monday, I received all the welcome emails for Avios rewards and premier banking. And before midday on Monday on the app and on the Web, my account was showing as a non-premier account. Like giving options to sign up for Blue rewards or to upgrade to premier banking. I reached out to chat to check and they said to wait until Tuesday morning. I checked Tuesday morning, still showing as non-premier and they asked me to call the Premier banking line, they would resolve it instantly. Customer Service guys asked me to wait until end of the week for get all the benefits as my account is still in the on-boarding stage. Remember, I already received an email from Barclays on Monday saying that my account and all the features are ready to use except the debitcard.
Not sure if mine was just an isolated issue or is this the standard premier sign up experience?
@jkcool – it’s not a great customer experience, but on opening an account one shouldn’t expect anything special because it has the ‘Premier’ moniker attached. The same applies to all bank ‘premier’ offerings – like ‘premium’ sausages it’s totally meaningless.
What Barclays say is that customers complain either way. If they set up the account quickly but not as Premier they complain and if they have to wait a week but it then starts as Premier, they also complain. In essence, Barclays has accepted your application after passing basic Barclays / regulatory checks but are now carrying out further human checks re your Premier eligibility. There is a particular issue you have highlighted of Barclays and profile clashes, often created by the tiniest, almost imperceptible difference, usually in the way your name or address is written. Unfortunately what you have experienced is normal, probably rather better than HSBC unless you pass their application process at the first hurdle.
There is definitely an increasing generational clash in expectations.
Older folks whose first experience of banking was as a kid, going in person to get a pass book issued with both sets of grandparents in attendance to vouch for the good character of the applicant, take this sort of thing in their stride.
The younger generation who increasingly will have a first experience of banking via an app provided by a fintech are rightly asking why is this so bad.
I can’t see a resolution as the complexity of the legacy banks’ systems is mind numbing. I have a friend whose career has been made contracting at RBS/Natwest persuading legacy systems to play nicely with each other. He sees no end to the gravy train.
I pay all ad hoc bills with Revolut because Barclays and HSBC are so clunky.
My experience with Barclays is comprehensively shambolic. It appears I have somehow ended up with three or four ‘profiles’ (ancient current account I closed c2009, sports club account, old mortgage and current Avios Barclaycard) that clash with each other constantly. The only people that know how to fix the issues that come up are the executive complaints team…
As @Froggee says it’s clearly legacy systems not working together and the Mastercard element of the Avios Barclaycard doesn’t seem to help either.
My experience with Barclays is comprehensively shambolic. It appears I have somehow ended up with three or four ‘profiles’ (ancient current account I closed c2009, sports club account, old mortgage and current Avios Barclaycard) that clash with each other constantly. The only people that know how to fix the issues that come up are the executive complaints team…
As @Froggee says it’s clearly legacy systems not working together and the Mastercard element of the Avios Barclaycard doesn’t seem to help either.
Have you been in branch to fix this? I was asked to do that when they had the 100k promotion so opened a Premier account – they fixed a three profile clash immediately.
BA and other airlines suffer from this legacy IT issue as well, one that nobody either knows how to fix or dares to go for the big bang option. Barclays hasn’t made as many acquisitions or such big banking ones as some others, Woolwich being the main one. BA still has its original BABS system plus bits of BCal, Dan Air, BMI all later sellotaped onto Amadeus, plus FLY and a few other bits and pieces.
I had a problems with a new Avios Barclaycard at first, (call center froze it when there was really no need to). Fortunately @JDB was around and helped me out with some options, I ended up doing it the ‘older folks’ way as mentioned by @Froggee, and went into a branch who very helpfully sorted it, by ringing the same call center, and receiving the same poor level of service we are all subject to. I am up and running now but it has put me off of signing up for a Premier Account.
Talking of passbooks, I received a letter from Nationwide that made me a bit sad, informing me they were doing away with the blue passbooks. My first one was given to me when my now very late Grandad died as he had been saving on my behalf whilst I was a child.
@JDB @Froggee I am old enough to have seen both legacy banking and new generation banking, my main issue is with giving consistent experience for customers. First email after opening the account came 3 days later which states that everything is good to go. Ideally, I would expect an email or a confirmation screen which just lists out the order in which things are going to work.
I work in the IT and a decade back, I have rolled out products for customers in the North American market for AIG. Legacy systems are very hard to integrate with modern off the shelf products (softwares) these companies buy. But by effectively managing customer expectations, these things can work well.
For opening the premier account, I had to delete the app and come in as a new customer. My app profile with mortgage account will not let me do that. Most of the people in CS don’t know about this issue and kept advising me to apply via the app. Probably, I need to set the bar low 🙂
It was a real eye opener to have to deal with Barclays again, after years with First Direct and Amex. At the former you still get super competent people that own problems, understand them and fix them on first contact. At the latter you have to push a bit, but overall the same. The fact that no one bar a few people in Canary Wharf at Barclays have this ability is just… infuriating.
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