Could you have your account closed if you swore at bank staff ?.

AlisonGray

I was in my local Barclay's today which has recently been made over, so they have got rid of all the counters bar one and now have loads of machines for everything. I went in to pay in a cheque and as there was a Queue at the counter I used one of the machines, when I was there a woman starting kicking off about the service and how its went downhill (She put other words in-between the service and downhill which I won’t repeat), there was a lot of swearing and I mean a lot !, the poor staff member was trying to calm her down but was having no joy, she also mentioned loudly that when she phones Barclay's the phone is not answered by shall we say someone in the UK, but it was more colourful language than that. Anyway people were leaving the branch and as soon as I was finished I left, in fact you could hear her from the street !.

I got to thinking would she have her account closed for behaviour like that ?.

pinkdalek

In short yes.

Sorry but no matter where you work you should not have to tolerate abusive, threatening and violent conduct.

Strip it to the bare bones, if it was your "shop" and that person was like that to one of your employees would you stand by and tolerate it?

Bestselling_Author

Any bank has the right to terminate a relationship with any customer, so she may be on dodgy ground. When I worked for them, there were times when customer's accounts were closed because of verbal abuse to staff and threats of physical abuse. And anyway, if she doesn't like the service, then it sounds as though she'd be better off moving banks anyway!

nwc389

Yes she should have her account closed because the staff members and other customers should not have to put up with that.
However if the branch manager is as spineless and as self preserving as the one I worked for then she will probably be fine.
When we got abusive customers our manager was NEVER to be found and nothing was ever done about them .

colsten

One of the reasons for Barclays closing an account:

• you behave in a threatening or abusive manner to our staff.

That's from clause 11 in the T&Cs for Personal Customers which you can find here

I agree with Bestselling_Author, if the service at Barclays is so terrible, she should move her account elsewhere. There are plenty of places that offer current accounts, assuming she hasn't already been banned there for abusive behaviour, and assuming they will accept her application.

Everynamestaken

Colsten summed it up, and I hope the member of staff reported the incident, aswell as a couple of customers.

On a side note, I find these kind of people astounding.

I accept people have a bad day, and I accept people Momentarily get riled by certain situations. However, what the OP described seems completely unnecessary, and I hope the woman didn't just "take" it.

Where I work, I know right from wrong and I know what you can and cannot say to customers, but I refuse to be spoken to like rubbish. People have a choice, and no one should be subjected to verbal abuse, especially when you can almost guarantee, they wouldn't like it if you went into there work place and did the same thing.

We seem to live in a society where some people seem to see certain establishments as a place to speak to people like absolutely crap. I certainly don't just mean the banks btw.

10pence

Yes they can and done it myself in the past when working at a bank when a customer violently snatched back a suspected counterfeit note from a colleague at a cash paying in machine.

ChiefGrasscutter

Everynamestaken wrote: »

We seem to live in a society where some people seem to see certain establishments as a place to speak to people like absolutely crap. I certainly don't just mean the banks btw.

And that applies to the bank staff themselves who from the evidence on this forum regularly pump out piles of crap and lies to their customers.
Presumably in the full knowledge that they can - because there is no come back and because if the customer accuses them correctly of being lying toads it is myseriously the customer who is at fault.

agrinnall

ChiefGrasscutter wrote: »

And that applies to the bank staff themselves who from the evidence on this forum regularly pump out piles of crap and lies to their customers.
Presumably in the full knowledge that they can - because there is no come back and because if the customer accuses them correctly of being lying toads it is myseriously the customer who is at fault.

"Regularly"? I look at most posts on this board and I don't recall seeing the situation you describe on more than a handful of occasions. Perhaps you could post links to a few of the threads you are referring to. Although I suppose when you say regularly you could mean once every 6 months, but I suspect that isn't what you're saying.

pmduk

Have you considered letting Barclays know you were unhappy at the incident? It's not just the staff who shouldn't have to tolerate such behaviour. Your comments may be helpful in determining the matter

AlisonGray

pmduk wrote: »

Have you considered letting Barclays know you were unhappy at the incident? It's not just the staff who shouldn't have to tolerate such behaviour. Your comments may be helpful in determining the matter

I am going to as I felt really sorry for the staff member, but I was talking to a friend about it today and she asked me to describe her which I did, she then told me she knows off her (Not personally) and she did the same thing a few months back in the NatWest branch !, she apparently was not happy to wait to be served and demanded to go to the front of the queue as she had no time to waste waiting around with 'Ordinary" people.

She sounds a bit of a nut case to be honest.