I seem to spend a lot of time on A Mind Lost complaining, but sometimes things just annoy me! The latest is Barclaycard who recently took over the credit card business of Goldfish which included Morgan Stanley, of whom I have been a credit card customer for years without a single problem.
The run-up to the changover was quite smooth, except that I had to be issued with a new card number (the old one was memorized years ago) and a new PIN number. What hasn’t gone smoothly however, is the online account management. Instead of transferring over the users from Morgan Stanley to Barclaycard’s system, everyone has to re-register with Barclaycard instead. The old facility was switched off last Monday, yet Barclaycard’s system only went live at the end of last week and has given me nothing but error messages or “sorry, too busy” messages since then.
There’s really no excuse for this. Barclayard knew how many customers they were taking on and they knew how many of those customers managed their account online. Where was their capacity planning? Only now does their registration error page make any mention of increasing capacity to cope with the extra load.
It’s not a good start for the new customers is it?
Update 01/10/08: On day 10, I’ve finally managed to register after four attempts today. It even let me log in once but I haven’t been able to repeat the feat. There’s also no sign of any record of cashback on the site.
Because of failings in the Barclay telephone system in February I was unable to register my new card due to start in March, I finally gave up, returned the new card and closed the account with the final payment due on the old that month.Since then I have so far received 4 text messages telling me I owe money and must make an immediate payment otherwise my credit rating will be at risk.
Despite several faxes, telephone calls and letters to Barclaycard these messages have not stopped. How do I stop these defamatory messages being sent over what is an insecure network?
I switched from Barclaycard to Morgan Stanley around 1999 and the service was good, no problems, I couldn’t believe it when Barclaycard too over Morgan Stanley and was back with the same old service. I recently cleard my small balance and cut the card in half and closed the account, but I still got another bill and a late payment charge, not sure how they worked that out. What is most annoying is the automated phone calls at 10.30pm, they give you a number to call, but its only available during office hours.