Month: May 2010

I talk about the weather a lot. I grumble a lot. I have now achieved the next level of Britishness – the sternly worded complaint letter.

In a nutshell, it seems that Barclaycard have been incapable of correctly setting up a direct debit for a balance transfer I’ve done 3 months ago. Because of this, I now have two missed payments on my credit report. The first time, after multiple painful phone calls to an Indian call centre, it came about that some unknown error on Barclaycard’s side had prevented the direct debit to be setup properly. It took another call to refund my late fees and yet another call to have my promotional balance transfer rate re-established. At every step, I was assured that my direct debit had now been properly setup.

This time, a payment was attempted, but rejected by Natwest. Turns out that the payment was made on the 11th, but the direct debit instructions were only received on the 14th. 3 days after the payment was attempted. 3 months (!!!) after it was supposed to have been created in the first place! It took two phone calls to refund my late fees, and I need to call back in 3 days to confirm that the promotional rate is again re-established. Good money says that it’s not, and will require yet more phone calls.

Of course, every time you call any number to try and reach a flesh-and-bone human, you get somebody called ‘Frank’ or ‘Jim’ with the heaviest Indian accent this side of the golden mile in Leicester. They try and be helpful, but they mostly follow a script and can’t really do anything concrete.

So, a stern letter. I faxed it this morning, and a copy of it went out by post. Since the fax number and the postal address are in Leicester, hopefully I’ll get in touch with somebody who can ‘get-things-done’.

We’ll see.