Review on Barclays by Jon Davidson
Fairly terrible experience with Barclays
When I was looking for a bank to open a savings account, I specifically looked for an account (mostly) on the internet, as these are usually the ones that don't require fees and have low (or zero) minimum balances. I narrowed it down to online savings Discover or Barclays and ended up settling on Barclays because of its 1.5% interest rate versus Discover's 1.0%. I read tons of reviews about Barclays' poor customer service versus Discover's best customer service, but the additional 0.5% was too attractive. The problems with Barclays began immediately. I thought that they would immediately approve my registration through their online portal, but I received a message that my application would be reviewed. After waiting a couple of business days and not getting a response, I decided to send an email to their customer support asking about the status of my request. I never got a response, and after a couple of days I finally got a notification that they were unable to approve the request. Based on some of the reviews I read, it seemed like a common occurrence. If you're ready to go ahead and deal with less-stellar CS over the phone, then a 1.5% savings account is definitely attractive. However, in the end it wasn't worth it.
Pros
- The customer service also made it very worthwhile.
Cons
- There are no fees associated with CD's, but the reason I gave 1 star is due to the fees associated with obtaining personal checks.
- Will be moving my deposits out asap.
