On getting my first job I opened an account with Barclays which is have retained ever since. It is the central Basingrad branch and it is still open. It is now down to one till for business and personal use. The rest of the bank is all about chargeable services, mortgage loans etc.
Quite a while back we were moving and I wanted an offset mortgage which Barclays did not offer. I moved to First Direct as they had top awards for customer service, the correct mortgage product and great Internet Banking capability.
Without realising it I had moved to a bank with a deliberate zero highstreet footprint. They do have an arrangement with HSBC for meetings but the rest has been done by telephone and internet since 1998.
If I compare this with the farce I have had with Barclays in the last year trying to move some money in the US and UK plus the deeply frustrating token/calculator they make me use. First Direct wins hands down as it is setup for personal banking.
At one point using Barclays Internet banking I was directed to call telephone banking. They then said I had to go into a branch. On arriving at the branch I was told I did not have an appointment and would not be seen as they were fully booked (no offer to hover and see if someone failed to turn up). Then finally on meeting the personal banker he said I could have done it online and I had to show him I could not. This is a largish branch not a local branch.
It does make me laugh that the post office counter scheme is now run through Bank of Ireland. If they were smart they would offer a chargable counter service for other banks cheques/cash and turn a profit on it given they were in a monopoly position. Not that we need yet another stealth tax on our businesses.
