Nastiness from Barclaycard

Years ago I got a credit card with Barclaycard. I buy quite a bit of stuff abroad, and a credit card company with good customer service is really important to me. This they certainly once were. Unfortunately in 2007 Barclaycard outsourced their call centre to India. I'm currently experiencing how bad things have got since.

Back in February I bought something from the French National Library. It arrived; was useless, and I sent it back. They agreed to refund me, but... not on my card. No, they wanted to do a bank-to-bank transfer. Of course Barclaycard had charged me currency conversion charges to send the money, and I'd have to pay them again to get it back this way. So I rang Barclaycard.

It took 5 weeks to get a claim form! I made 10 calls in all. Invariably the staff could not understand English well enough to deal with me. Nor was this all. Some of the people who answered the phone would say "yes, yes" and then simply ignore the call! Others would promise a "call back" which would never appear. When I sent a dossier of the correspondence, it was rejected as "insufficient" (which it wasn't). I ended up sending them a letter threatening court action -- which has been ignored.

Researching the court option, I learned that you have to go to arbitration first. I rang the Financial Ombudsman Service, who gave me the number of a UK call centre for Barclaycard!

This I rang, and got someone sensible. It still took a while for them to get back to me, but I got a reply.

It turns out that Barclaycard didn't consider it was their problem! The vendor was offering a refund, that was good enough for them. And they behaved as if I knew this and was being difficult!?! The fact that I would lose money on the double currency charges was of no concern to them.

I then demanded to complain, and difficulties were raised; but I persisted (since I need this for the court). It was, frankly, a rather unpleasant phone call.

It's been, what, 4 months now. Barclaycard have been an utter misery to deal with. Avoid this company. You don't want to deal with them, really you don't!

My only consolation is that dealing with me will be costing them more than if they had been fair and decent in the first place.

Eyecare opticians

My eyes don't seem to work as well as they used to. So I went along to see Peter Gerber, at Eyecare opticians in the Norwich Road. I remember when he used to have his shop in Tacket Street, and he's always been a reliable optician. I take along my last couple of prescriptions, for comparison. He seems rather grumpier than I remember, but he does an eye-test for me, and I get the prescription. Maybe he just doesn't like the online competition! Anyway I order some reading glasses from him (around £60); and I get a new set of distance glasses made up online (around £20).

A couple of weeks ago, I mislaid my reading glasses. So I decided to order another set online. I get the prescription, which is hand-written, and I'm not sure about a couple of figures in it. By chance the previous two prescriptions are with it, so I check to see if they are clearer.

Shock! The prescription from Eyecare is nothing like the previous two. Figures are wildly different. The sphere on one eye, which went from 3.0, to 3.2, is 6.0! And so on. Yet I get my eyes tested regularly. Surely my eyes can't have changed that much in a year?

Only one way to find out. Off I go to Dollond and Aitcheson in Watford. I pay them, and get a new prescription. And guess what... it's got the same sort of figures as the original two. Sphere of 3.4, not 6.0. Allowing for wear and tear on me, it's what I would expect. So where did the crazy figures on the Eyecare prescription come from?

I don't know what happened here. But I don't think that I will go back to Eyecare Opticians any time soon.

Why the Royal Mail are useless

Having got my bank draft (see yesterday), I wanted to send it to the USA. So I put it in an envelope and went down to Watford Post Office.

The Post Office has abandoned its building, and now squats at the back of W.H.Smith, where you have to fight through a crowd to get to it. There the surly staff deal slowly with what is invariably an immense queue.

I get to the front. What I get is an immigrant with limited English. I mention that I want a signature -- meaning that I need to know it is delivered -- and everything else I say is ignored. I'm pretty much forced to accept an international recorded delivery, despite being fairly sure from the website that what I want their 'AirSure' service. They charge me more than the website mentioned. There is no tracking of the letter; or, in their cute phrase, they only track it until it leaves the country. It will take a week, for some unknown reason, to put it on a plane and offload it.

"What's in it?" she demands loudly. I don't really want to say that it contains a bank draft, in the hearing of the local office pickpocket, but have no choice. I make sure it is insured. She partly sticks an ugly printed thing on the front; but it's far too large for the envelope, so she takes it off again. She demands I write the from address on the middle of the back -- I hope that I don't get the envelope sent to me at home instead!

It's a nasty, stressful experience. Poor quality service, poor quality post, no tracking, and very slow. Amazing how things have got worse in a century, when first-class post could arrive same day.

Getting a bank draft

It's funny how bank branches vary. HSBC in Ipswich are useless and nasty; HSBC in Watford are nice, helpful and intelligent. Lloyds TSB in Ipswich are nice; Lloyds TSB in Watford are as thick as bricks.

So what brought this on, I hear you ask?

Well, I need to send a couple of hundred dollars to a colleague in the USA. Must happen every day, so I ring HSBC. Am told that a cheque will take 12 weeks to clear. Express astonishment, am told the same, and go on my way. Ring Lloyds TSB, told that I will have to physically come into a branch and sign a little form, then wait a week, and then I can have a draft.

I go into Lloyds TSB in Watford. The girl on the desk produces a multi-page form, which she tries to hand to me. "Just fill that in," she says. I demur; I don't pay people to do things for me so that they can do this. I try another staff member, and ask to complain. I'm swiftly side-tracked; she offers to fill in the form. She starts. She gets to the money field and does it really badly. Instead of $_ _ _ _ 200.12, she enters $200 _ _ _ _ .12. Any fool can see that can be altered readily, and I object. Her response is to try to get me to fill it out. Seeing that I am dealing with idiots, I leave.

Lloyds TSB in Ipswich are better; but they still demand that I physically visit them twice, a week apart. They allege fraud as the reason. No doubt this is so. But... preventing the customer doing business is not the answer.

Then I go into HSBC in Watford. I talk to the girl, who reckons it might be available in an hour. She fills in a simple form and asks me to sign. I can't hang around for an hour, so agree to pick it up tomorrow. Quick, simple, easy.

Well done, HSBC. But fire those call centre staff, OK? And... it really isn't worth trying to do foreign currency transfers with Lloyds. They don't know how, even when they're being helpful.

Getting rid of normal light-bulbs will damage our health

The green movement is determined to prevent us lighting our homes as we find appropriate. To this end they have used backstairs undemocratic political influence to outlaw incandescent bulbs in countries under left-wing control around the world. But problems are starting to emerge, only a few weeks after it became impossible to buy 100w lightbulbs here in the UK, and no wonder.

Today the BBC reports sight fears over low-energy bulbs. Unless you have perfect sight, it's like going partly blind with the diminished light. The Royal National Institute for the Blind are pointing out how this will affect the blind and partially sighted, and the risk of falls and injury in the home. The Royal College of Opthalmologists says that something must be done. Greenpeace and DEFRA set their faces hard against this, of course. The ideology must go through, and let people break their necks, it's for the greater good! Not that the people got asked, of course. Another report tells of allergic reactions to the new, dimmer lights. Another BBC report tells of people hoarding, as I am doing. I've seen letters on Teletext from people who have tried testing the new bulbs with a photographic light-meter and found that a "100w equivalent" is actually equivalent to about 40-50w, and a forum here reports the same.

A petition has been started at the Number 10 Downing Street site. Sign it and express your opposition to this nonsense.

British Gas come up trumps

I got back home from holiday this morning - Christmas morning - at 1am, to find the house stoney cold. Nothing I could do seemed to get the radiators working. The boiler was working, the pump was working, there was ample hot water - but nothing from the radiators.

Fortunately I have a Homecare agreement with British Gas, covering my boiler and central heating system. At 8:30am I called them, and got a nice Indian lady who promised to have someone with me by 1pm. By 11am the man had arrived and fixed the problem. I was his third customer of Christmas day. It turned out that the little motor that operates the valve which decides whether you get hot water and heating, or just hot water, had failed.

It's easy to dislike British Gas. The company goes out of its way to be unlikeable, as I have documented elsewhere in this blog. Indeed I encountered another example of corporate greed and stupidity today; the Indian woman was obliged to try to sell me a still more expensive policy - as if someone making a call in an emergency wants to hear that!

But the service provided by the engineers is first class. Imagine what misery I would have faced without it; no heating for days and days, and then dealing with surly, lazy tradesmen who merely wanted to be on holiday. It would most certainly have ruined my entire Christmas break with worry and stress. As it is, I wish you all a merry Christmas.

Keeping us in the dark - the vanishing 100 watt lightbulbs

Last weekend, the last day of November, I went down to B&Q. The lightbulbs were right in the entrance, but something looked odd to me. Then I realised that there were no 100 watt lightbulbs there. Neither B&Q had any; one branch told me that it had withdrawn them. Nor did Homebase, nor did Sainsburys. I don't know if any other shop in Ipswich is still stocking these.

Now I know that Gordon Brown has decided that we can't have any 100w light bulbs from 2011. He and his friends have decided that they will decide whether we have enough light, and what kind, in our homes. But... it's not 2011.

It's pretty clear that the major retailers have got together, like a cartel, and decided to fix the market. After all, if B&Q took them off the shelves and the rest didn't, B&Q would just lose all that trade. The same would apply to any retailer. And that would never do, oh dear me no. So they all got together in a little conspiracy to deny us these goods.

Fortunately it is still possible to order them online. I got a delivery of 20 this week by post.

I know that retailers must obey the law, however wicked and depraved the people who passed it. But to conspire against us, as a group? I thought that was against the law itself.

Notice how no media mention of this event has appeared. Something that affects most houses in Britain; and no-one says a thing. It makes you realise that only the unimportant news appears on TV.