US Edition
Celebrated journalist Dame Esther Rantzen is a strong advocate for the vulnerable, having founded the charities Childline and Silver Line
Hell hath no fury like a loyal bank customer scorned.
I have been scorned by Barclays and I feel absolutely furious. For the past 67 years I have been a long-term and truly loyal customer but now it seems that our close personal relationship is over, and Barclays has ghosted me.
I remember when Barclays and I first met, just before my sixteenth birthday. My parents had decided I was old enough to open my own bank account, not that I had any money, but I was about to be confirmed and expected a burst of generosity from kind relatives.
My grandmother had been a customer of the local branch of Barclays (remember local branches?) so she made an appointment for me with the manager (remember bank managers?) and when we arrived we were ushered into his office.
I sat on the customer’s side of his shiny, capacious desk as he showed me my first cheque book (remember cheque books?) and explained how to make out a cheque, and why you should cross it, and make out the stubs, and all those other lost arts of cheque-writing.
That was in 1956, and over the intervening decades I have been a careful, undemanding customer, never running up huge overdrafts, getting to know individual cashiers, and feeling that I had a relationship with the company to whom I had entrusted my few savings and so were looking after them for me.
Cut to 2023. Branches have closed, without anyone thinking ahead about the customers who actually need advice and a face-to-face conversation with a human being. They tell us it’s because everybody is now choosing to bank online.
What choice do we have? It’s impossible to ask advice from a computer mouse, while you’re paying your bills and working out if you can afford to buy quite so many tulip bulbs.
And if you have a mortgage, or an overdraft, interest rates are constantly rising while the rate of interest paid on your savings is failing to keep up.
Barclays, for example, is paying a rate of just 1.6pc on its “Everyday Saver account”, while charging mortgage customers rates ranging from 5pc to more than 7pc.
Although Barclays is not alone, many of the old high-street banks seem to have been equally unfair and greedy. Does it matter? I think it does.
Retail banking is the main service banks give their customers, the community and the nation. The relationship at best was empowering and enabling.
But since the 2009 crash, bank managers have joined estate agents and journalists at the bottom of the popularity polls of professions. And the erosion of the service they provide has sunk them even lower, if that were possible.
So now, even though Barclays is at last offering some kind of return on my very small nest egg with a rate of 5.5pc, provided I lock it up for a year, I’ve decided enough loyalty, already – I’ll take my pennies elsewhere.
But where? A little while ago I put a pound or two into National Savings and Investments Premium Bonds.
Although my late husband used to love a weekly flutter on the football pools and the lottery which meant for a couple of hours on a Saturday he could imagine he was a millionaire until it turned out he wasn’t, I have never been a gambler.
But my few Premium Bonds have come up trumps, with a £25 prize every now and again to give me a little lift, and encourage me to buy those tulip bulbs.
So that’s where I’m going. Not that I expect a personal relationship. Those days are gone. But I don’t feel any guilt at all about my disloyalty. As I say, hell hath no fury….
I’m furious with Barclays – I’m leaving after 70 years
After a lifetime of loyalty, you’d think the least on offer would be a decent savings rate. Not a chance