Barclays (Barclays Bank)

Member Name: Castelbranco

Product:	Barclays Bank
Date:	18/09/09 (113 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Many branches

Disadvantages: Expensive to send money abroad or buy Euro

Barclays is a UK Bank and I am sure that anyone who has been in Uk is familiar with them.
They have a very wide network of branches and it is primarily for this reason that I opened an account with them more than 10 years ago.
Today I still use Barclays for savings, although in the current climate interest rates are not that great and for day to day operations. I have set up few direct debit with them and, differently from what happens in Europe, I did not have to pay any charges to do so, although I know this is common practise in UK.
I have always resisted their offers to operate my account via the Internet, but I set up a password to be able to use their phone banking services. I also have a Barclaycard from them.
When I go abroad, I no longer use my Barclays Debit card to withdraw money because I found that their exchange rate is quite expensive, I have actually set up a Euro account with a Bulgarian Bank while I was in Bulgaria and have enough Euros on that account to cover my purchases in Euro when I travel to the continent. Barclays is also very expensive when it comes to buy Euros over the counter or when it comes to send money abroad. I prefer to use firms which specialize in this.
Most of the staff at my branch are friendly, but I noticed they employ may be far too many young graduates and there is one guy in particular who is quite arrogant and also not very efficient at all. I found that other banks, like Hsbc do not have these problems.
The waiting time at the till is never too long, most of the time less than 5 minutes.
Like other banks, they are always trying to sell you something and each bank seem to repeat the same pitch. At Halifax they keep on offering me home insurance, while Barclays are over keen to offer me loans. There was a time when I went to their branch on 3 separate occasions within the same week, and each time they offered me a loan for 25,000 GBP, saying my credit record was perfect and bla, bla, which is true, and I also had in excess of 40,000 GBP with them, but why somebody who has 40,000 GBP would want to borrow 25,000 beats me, although I guess it may be to put down a deposit on a house may be.
If I had to rate them, I would give them 7 out of 1

Summary: 7 out 10