Iain @ Internet

Just passed through there for the 4th time; seems to me to be a well designed airport experience.

That said, I could do without having to have my photo taken and stored by BA just so I can fly to Edinburgh. Needless to say I could not see any overt explanation of what is being done with the data and given the deployment at the front of a queue there is little chance for a passenger to ask about it.

Well, it had to happen eventually given the pace at which this crime is growing.

I’ll keep a running commentary here for my own records as much as anything else.

Here’s what’s happened so far:

- My Barclaycard Visa bill arrived this morning.

- I almost choked on my breakfast when I saw an charge O2 for £1,027.31; my iPhone bill should be £45.

- I assumed that it was a mistake at O2, who had a lot of trouble moving from my old O2 account to the new iPhone one (not a surprise given my previous post on the matter).

- I phoned O2 who, on the first call, handled it badly, telling me that they could not see such a transaction on my account and that I needed to phone up Barclaycard and get a ‘GED’ number for the transaction.

- I phoned up Barclaycard who told me that only a merchant could request such a number.

- While I was on the phone to Barclaycard, I noticed another two Paypal payments that I did not recognise…..the penny was starting to drop.

- I asked Barclaycard to put a stop on the account and send out a form for me to challenge the transactions.

That’s where we are at the moment. I don’t really regard it as identity theft at the moment, much more likely just plain old credit card fraud….but let’s run with it and see what happens.

I took out a 12 month subscription to Setanta in July 07 and then found that I did not use it much (Rangers were having a very poor season so not much reason to watch).

I called them in mid July to cancel but could never get through – the call centre system did not have a queue and just kept asking me to ‘call back later’.

So, I backed things up with two e-mails – neither of which were responded to. Bear in mind that they had already taken my August payment and no doubt will be trying to take my September payment.

I finally got through to them on the phone this morning, only to be told that I had to put my cancellation request in writing.

They have wasted a lot of my time, and stolen my money – not good!!!! Now i’ll need to spend more time fighting to get my money back.

I was trying to renew one of my domain names that was bought originally through this lot. Despite sending me e-mails regularly, their customer log-in (which uses e-mail) refused to recognise my e-mail address so I could not get in to renew.

So….I had to then phone them up at a cost of 10p per minute. After 40 minutes on hold I got through to Peter – he said that he had to look up some information and that he’d call me back after 2 the next day – by which point I had one day left before the domain expired. From our discussion, I had very little confidence that this call-back was in fact going to happen – so I checked with Peter who re-assured me that he would indeed call back the following day to progress.

……guess what…..no call back. Thankfully I then found a way to renew the domain through the reseller I use who have an account with 123reg.

Needless to say, any business I have with 123reg is now about to be shifted.

This ongoing court case over bank charges looks set to rumble on for a while – although I don’t see how any can doubt that the bank charge regime quoted was based on excessive profits.

The much bigger issue, I suspect, will be this – the UK Information Commissioners investigation into practicies within Barclays call centres. There must be a lot of call centre managers panicking at present – Barclays are unlikely to be the only ones whose practices merit investigation.

It has emerged that in 2005, personal details of over 100,000 Bulldog Broadband customers were stolen.

Bulldog was under the ownership of Cable & Wireless at the time but has since been taken over by Pipex. Cable & Wireless has pledged to investigate the security breach.

James Brown, Managing Director of Bulldog Internet, told The Guardian newspaper: “Our understanding is that, following an external enquiry by Cable & Wireless, it has become apparent that at some point in December 2005, Cable & Wireless had some of their customer contact details illegally obtained by a third party. This resulted in a small number of their customers receiving unsolicited calls.”

While it hasn’t been made clear exactly what details were “illegally obtained”, although one of the affected consumers has apparently contacted The Guardian since and told them that the details included credit card and bank account details.

Despite this, a Cable & Wireless spokesperson insisted that none of the 100,000 customers had experienced their cards or accounts being accessed or used illegally.

“We are already taking appropriate legal action against the third parties that we believe may be responsible for this unauthorised use of our customer data,” she added.

This article just begs to be read time and again…..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6476155.stm

Mis-selling is ‘rife’ at Barclays

By Amanda Egbujo
Undercover reporter, BBC Whistleblower

A nine-month investigation by BBC reporters working undercover in a leading British bank has revealed a culture of ruthlessness and lies which will shock their customers.

Barclays says that it treats customers fairly

BBC1′s Whistleblower

With a touch of glee, my bank trainer told a classroom full of call centre trainees that he “loved” getting customers complaining about bank charges.

“They’d phone up, start crying and blaming you and telling you their kids are going to starve. And I’d be like, ‘I don’t know you – I don’t care’. I was just thinking ‘you’re not getting it back’. I was a right git.”

This was an early insight into how life might be working inside a Barclays call centre in Doxford, Sunderland.

I have been undercover in one of the top British banks for the last five months – and it has been an extraordinary experience.

I’ve seen customers misled, lied to and treated with contempt.

I’ve seen people charged for financial products they neither asked for or knew they had.

And in a separate investigation I’ve also seen evidence of bank employees working with criminals to commit fraud.

People know we are a good bank, we’re trustworthy, we do the right thing, we treat people with respect
Barclays spokesman

All this in an industry which claims it operates to the highest standards of care and trust.

At the call centre in Doxford I was one of 1,800 people who work day in, day-out selling Barclays’ products.

Staff often gave the impression that customer service lay at the bottom of everything we did. But that wasn’t always the case.

The lie began the minute we got through to the customer. “Hello, my name is Amanda Egbujo and I’m an account consultant.”

I wasn’t anything of the sort of course. I was employed as a “sales adviser”. But as one of my colleagues told me: “You have to lie a lot,” if you want to get into the call for long enough to start selling.

Yet banks are supposed to operate under strict rules imposed by the Financial Services Authority to prevent customers being misled.

‘Cynical attitude’

But this cynical attitude to sales – and to customers – permeated every aspect of my work with the bank – both in the call centre and later when I transferred to a high street branch of the bank in Guildford, Surrey.

As my trainer Simon Pickergill said: “I hate it when they say the customer is always right. It’s just ridiculous. Someone was stoned when they made up that policy.”

Remember this isn’t just anyone, this is a man who Barclays had chosen to teach us, the bank’s new staff, how to behave.

Barclays, like most banks, has a system of targets and bonuses to encourage its staff to sell.

I hate it when they say the customer is always right. It’s just ridiculous
Simon Pickergill
Barclays’ trainer

I saw the effects of the ruthless target-driven environment.

In just four weeks in my branch, I saw one of my colleagues break down in tears because of the pressure to sell and I heard about another from a different branch being suspended, accused of a series of misdemeanours – including moving more than £200,000 from one customer’s account to another, without permission, purely so he could get commission.

Mis-selling seemed to be rife.

One manager admitted that the bank’s “Additions” accounts are one of the “most mis-sold” products in the bank.

Additions’ accounts can cost around £150 a year, in exchange for which the customer gets a range of benefits.

They are worthwhile for some customers, but even more worthwhile for the bank – raking in tens of millions of pounds a year.

To encourage us to sell them we are paid a bonus of £10 for each one we sell.

The problem is that if the customer already has an account with us they don’t have to sign for the new account.

And as the manager explained it often happens that staff, under pressure to sell, simply give the customer an Additions account without telling them and many may not notice the extra charge on their account for months.

‘Not representative’

Indeed just a week after that manager described this to me, I was there when an angry couple came into my branch complaining that just that had been done to them.

Just a few weeks ago Barclays announced record profits of £7 billion.

What I saw there makes me feel very uneasy about how they made at least some of that money.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6476155.stm

In response to our allegations Barclays Bank said: “We are not in the business of encouraging or condoning mis-selling or inappropriate sales in any way whatsoever, and we stamp on that when we find it because it is completely inappropriate behaviour for a bank.

“We pride ourselves on being a responsible institution that puts its customers first.”

It added: “People know we are a good bank, we’re trustworthy, we do the right thing, we treat people with respect.

“I don’t think what you’ve seen is any way representative of the way in which Barclays does business, and I’m sure our millions of customers would tell you exactly the same thing.”