Barclays Current Account application - referred to branch?

Extant

td_007 wrote: »

Fair point. My view comes from my experience is all that I can say.......further reinforced by being forced to go into a branch to open for e.g. a Monthly Saving a/c if you are a new customer. It was a similar case when I wanted to open an ISA with them. Why can these be not done online like the other a/cs or banks?

For the same reason that you can't do a lot of things with Barclays online that you can do with other banks: our backbone system is from the 1980s and is what is known in computing as a legacy system.

Years of underinvestment in IT leaves Barclays critically behind other banks and results in branches having to fax international payment instructions. Although there has been some improvement in more recent years, it's still lagging hugely behind other banks - until July 2008, some branches couldn't access your signature electronically, they had to request it be faxed to them from a local processing center.

I know it's always much easier to believe that it's some evil plot to try and sell to you - and that is always on the minds of the sales directors, yes - those of us who work in operations don't really care. We're trying to make these processes faster, but it takes a long time. It's not as simple as you may think.