We so don’t have a digital economy yet
[Dave Birch] It’s been a bit crazy at home because we’ve been having some building work done. Last month I forgot to pay one of our Barclaycard bills, so I got charged a late fee. I didn’t want to get caught like this again, so I logged in to the super new online account management system and chose the option to set up a direct debit for the minimum payment. I double checked the account details and got a message that said something like “your direct debit is all set”. At this point, I marvelled at the efficiency of online financial services and promptly forgot about the whole thing.
Today I had a call from Barclaycard. The woman told me that I had missed my payment again this month.
“Impossible” I said “because I’ve got a direct debit set up to pay the minimum if I forget to pay the bill”.
She says she knows nothing about this and that I have to call Barclaycard. “Aren’t you Barclaycard?”, I say, “can’t you tell me?”
No, she insists, I have to call customer “service”.
I call the customer “service” number on the back of the card.
“Please enter the 16 digit number on the front of the card”.
I punch in the PAN and get through to customer “service” in India (I’m guessing: all of the agents sound Indian and have Indian names). The first thing that the guy asks me is “what is your card number?”.
I tell them that it’s the one I just punched in. No matter: the customer “service” agent tells me that his system doesn’t know the number, so I have to tell him.
“What was the point of asking me to punch it in then?” I asked, genuinely curious. He doesn’t know. I’ll bet some management consultants have advised them to install a new CRM system and it’s not connected to anything else.
I tell them the number again. They ask me for my name.
“David Birch”
And the first line of the address. I tell them I that someone just called and said that the monthly payment had been missed, and I want to know why. They transfer me to another customer “service” agent, who asks for my name.
“It’s still David Birch”
They tell me that the direct debit has had a “delay”, but they don’t know why, and they tell me to call my bank (which is also Barclays).
Since I’ve got nothing else to do, I call Barclays Premier Banking. I have, of course, forgotten the 5-digit PIN number, so I have to go and find my last bank statement for verification.
I explain the problem. The guy tells me that although the direct debit is set up on my account correctly, it takes FOUR TO SIX WEEKS for the “system” to process it, and that’s why the payment hasn’t gone through, because I only set it up a week before the payment.
Meanwhile, I cancelled one of my other credit cards (on which, incidentally, I bill several thousand pounds per month on average) because I was annoyed with them about something else. I couldn’t be bothered to look through The Telegraph or visit Money Supermarket, so I did what any normal person would do and asked the twitterverse. A follower made the excellent suggestion of a John Lewis MasterCard, which since we shop at Waitrose was a good idea. I went to their web site, filled out the form and shortly afterwards received an e-mail telling me that I had been accepted for the card. Great, I thought. But then it said that in a hommage to John Lewis’ origins in Victorian Britain, they were going to post me some forms to fill out and sign.
A couple of days later the forms arrived, I signed them and put them in an envelope, meaning to post them later on. Now, naturally, I haven’t the slightest idea what I did with them.
So much for e-finance.
It seems bizarre that in a world of computers, laser beams and a buggy on Mars, I couldn’t just log in to Barclaycard, set up a direct debit and expect to have it actioned that day, or perhaps the day after. And I could easily have authenticated myself to John Lewis using my Barclays dongle (and I could even have signed an agreement online using the same technology). Digital signatures have been law in the UK for years, so why do I have to mess around with bits of paper to get a new credit card? I could understand this nonsense if I had never before touched the financial system, but I’ve already been KYC’d and AML’s up the wazoo since 1977.
Isn’t this the sort of thing that the government’s “Digital Economy” Bill should have been dealing with instead of dreaming up arbitrary and capricious means to transfer to wealth from the rest of the economy to record companies?
What isn’t in there? Anything about stimulating the actual digital economy.
Quite.
In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen megabytes [posted with ecto]
If it makes you feel any better Dave, I recently had an almost identical situation occur in Singapore, supposedly one of the most advanced eBusiness countries in the world.
The ‘type in your 16 digit card number’ IVR routine is the bane of my existence and despite reporting the failure to Citibank here countless times they still persist in annoying the hell out of me by asking for it twice every time I call!
The classic occurred when I recently left my wallet in a cab on my way to the airport. I noticed as I was boarding the flight and had my wife call the two card issuers whilst I flew off. By the time I got back home five days later a replacement card was waiting from one provider but I had to physically go to the bank to have it ‘linked’ to my bank account. Derrr! The other issuer didn’t send a new card because they weren’t sure if I needed a replacement. Double derrr!