Impersonal Banking
One particular area of supreme annoyance that I have yet to mention on this blog is the absolute hell I go through once every 2 to 3 months at the hands of my bank.
I’ll refrain from naming them, as I’d HATE to generate any bad publicity for them. Let’s just refer to them as “Barclays Bank PLC“.
For many years, “Barclays Bank PLC” have cropped up to annoy me every so often. Right back to 10 years ago when they would fail to send me a new cheque book when I ran out, EVERY TIME, and have the nerve to say it was my fault EVERY TIME.
“You must have made a mistake when writing the “trigger” cheque and thrown it away.”
Well no. I’m not a moron. I know how to write a cheque. And seriously, you think I’m ruining cheques so often than I’m throwing away the “trigger cheque” in EVERY book? Thanks for the insult. Now go fuck yourself.
They would also fail to send me paper statements for months on end, then refuse to give me access to my details on the phone because I didn’t know the exact amount taken for 3 different direct debits, and the days they were taken. Information I would have if they would SEND ME MY FUCKING STATEMENTS.
This was followed by them deciding to insist that I had set up a 5-digit telephone banking passcode, when I actually hadn’t … and I’d keep requesting they send a new one out in the mail, which of course, never arrived. It got to the point where I kept checking that they even had the correct address for me, as nothing they ever sent seemed to find my house!
Well, since the advent of online banking, I’ve not had to deal with this specific flavour of banking bullshit. With statements being online and cheques becoming a thing of the past, almost everything was under control.
Almost that is, apart from their ridiculously sensitive and completely idiotic fraud detection software.
Now, I think it’s just a GREAT idea that your bank watches your outgoings for suspicious activity and should certainly contact you if they believe something untoward is going on. But this has not been the policy of, ahem, “Barclays Bank PLC“.
What they like to do is allow their software to detect what they have arbitrarily defined as “suspicious activity” and then immediately block your account without warning, forcing you to call them once you’ve had to suffer the inconvenience and embarrassment of having your card being declined when trying to buy something!
Their definition of “suspicious activity” seems to have absolutely no basis in logic.
- If they don’t recognize a vendor or website you pay money to, you’re blocked.
- If you pay 2 or 3 “small” amounts to the same vendor (even if it’s something like iTunes), you’re blocked.
- If you make 2 “large” (>£150) payments online in one day, you’re blocked.
- If you start spending money in another country (even after calling them to say you’ll be doing so), you’re blocked.
- If an online transaction takes place to a UK company while you’re spending money in another country, you’re blocked.
I’ve even had them continue block my account multiple times for one website, even though I’d set up a direct debit with them after the first two times. Every time the direct debit was taken, it’d be flagged again.
And no, it wasn’t porn. It was a perfectly legitimate podcast hosting company that the bank had decided, for reasons known only to themselves, were “suspicious“.
This is just a small sampling of reasons they’ve given me for blocking my account.
On one occasion, I was blocked when I paid for two things online within 5 minutes of each other. Well, I’m sure you’re thinking “maybe the two things seemed unrelated and so were flagged“.
No.
The two things were tickets to a West End show … and a hotel room in London.
Yeah … super fucking suspicious, I know! And anyway, who’s to say that I wouldn’t go online when I had a free half hour to buy 5 different, unrelated items all in one go? What business is it of the bank’s, how I spend my own money?
I don’t know how the fraud detection used by “Barclays Bank PLC” matches up to other high street banks, but all I can say is that I’ve haven’t heard anyone I know complain about this immediate blocking of access to their account based on nothing but one or two transactions that the bank deem suspicious … except from people using the same bank as me, naturally.
Maybe I’m crazy, but if I were implementing such a system, the suspicious activity would prompt a call to the account holder, and not the refusal of service when they try to buy petrol from the same station they use every week, or withdraw £20 from an ATM 3 minutes from their home address! I know for a fact that the software is capable of making these comparisons and cross referencing new transactions against previous ones so really, all I can deduce is that “Barclays Bank PLC” either didn’t bother paying for coders that know what they’re doing or they have only implemented their fraud system to check a box on an insurance form, and actaully don’t care about inconveniencing their customers.
If it weren’t such a hassle to get everything switched, I’d have changed banks long ago. But I have the feeling that step 1 of the process would involve me calling them and having to prove I’m me and I don’t think I can tale that kind of stress.
MisterShouty 