Deloitte — Pathetic Customer Care & Priority Circle Offer

Hi,
Barclays is supposed to be one of the leading and true International player in Banking. I have lived and travelled intensivley in Europe and have witnessed the kind of customer care shown.

Assuming the same i had agreed to apply for a Barclay Credit Card when one of its sales executives called up. To my sruprise there is no online service where one can check their current balance and transactions. On one particular instance my purchases have gone more than my available credit balance, and a letter has been sent to me quoting the above reason and my card has been deactivated will be deactivated untill i cleared the dues. ( in reality, i had paid well more and above the minimum mentioned payment for that month ). I was so embarassed to read that letter. Same day when i got this letter, i called up on 6000 4444 and spoke to one these executives and explained her the situation. How can a statement like that be made and mailed to a customer who has no prior intimation on his available balance (where there is no online service to check the same nor an SMS or call informing that one is about to go over the available balance?). I then requested the customer care executive to arrange me a call back on the kind of poor service, for which i was promised for a call back in 48 hours. Which i never did. I call them back after a week and the same story and promise is repeated saying that we are sorry and will make sure that I will get a call back with in 48 hours. But all in vain.

They have activated some offer called priority circle offer. and debited 5000 and service tax on my account. But I have not received any gift or any document . They had called up and said that you are selected as a special customer by Barclay Card, so we are giving you this offer. You will get life time discount of 20% to 30% every shopping, dining, etc. you will get so many other benefits. But I have not received any gift or any thing or any document even. When I enquired about this they told when you will have to pay the amount then you will get this offer. It has been a month by now.

After all this i called up the customer service executive and spoke to a guy named : "Sandeep" on 19th August 2008, between 2 and 3 PM. He was clueless on what he was talking and his customer support skills are a big 0. I try to expalin him the situation (priority circle offer), he says that i have to call the priority circle and make the payment. (But Y should i make a separate payment? when the sum of 5000 Rs and odd has been debited from my available credit card balance and i have paid my credit card bill well on time and with descent current available balance) Is this not a kind of purchase?

Finally i tell him that since I am having a very bad experience (customer service) from Barclays, i would want to cancel my credit card. Instead of being apologetic, this is the response i get : "you can not cancel unless you clear the outstanding amount. Once you clear that, then you may place a request to cancel and take it up further".

This is a disgrace to BARCLAYS in employing such customer service executives. Hope BARCLAYS reads this complaint of mine and do the needful in not losing any more customers.