There are better credit cards out there (Barclaycard)

Member Name: olly374

Product:	Barclaycard
Date:	14/12/05 (329 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: well known brand

Disadvantages: APR, points, customer service staff who try and sell you everything

I have had a barclaycard for about 11 years now. I started of with a Student Barclaycard and progressed to a Platinum Card. This progression was actually not due to my earnings but the fact that I was in full-time employment and complained about an aspect of thier customer service and so was given a Platinum Card for being with them for so long.

The APR of Barclay card varies and they put the APR up two months ago by 2% due to the high levels of debt carried by the UK consumer. This is unfair if like me you don't have a lot of debt on your credit cards but that's their policy due to them pushing their credit cards to people who cannot afford the repayments.

The card is a standard credit card with a 56 day interest free credit period and you get charged for things such as:
1. late payments
2. cash advances
3. foreign transactions

About 3 years ago barclaycard was part of the Nectar Scheme which meant if you spend on your card you could get nectar points. This was actually one of the main reasons I kept the credit card because if I was say in Sainburys I could pay on my barclaycard and get Nectar points from the store and from my payment.

Around July 2005 Barclay announced they would no longer be part of the Nectar Scheme from September 2005 due to a survey from their customers. Frankly I don't know, nor any of the media have actually found a barclaycard customer who has come forward and stated they were part of this survey. So now you get some rubbish points if you book your holiday using your barclaycard via barclaycards special line.

My main bugbear with barclaycard is the customer service operatives who try and sell you something. I'm on the telephone preference service and mail preference service so I don't get lots of junk mail and annoying sales calls but this unfortunately doesn't stop Barclaycard from ringing me up to try and sell me a finicial product I don't need or can get cheaper elsewhere. For example last week I was querying a transaction on my bill and the conversation was fine until the end when the operator tried to sell me some payment protection. I stated quite clearly I was not interested but until I repeated myself like a broken record the operator didn't get the message that I didn't want the service. The other annoying thing is that you may find that you have 5 or 6 drop phone calls in a day on your homeline because you are at work. You eventually get rung up and it's a barclaycard operator trying to sell you life insurance. Again you have to literally slam the phone down on them before they understand you are not interested.

Pros of Barclaycard
-It's a credit card and useful for internet transactions

Cons of Barclaycard
-High APR
-Charging you for foriegn transactions (there is a card out there that doesn't)
-Pushy sales staff (there are cards out whose operators don't do this)
-Not being part of the nectar scheme (there is another credit card that now is)
-They send you credit card cheques until you ring up and demand that they don't send you them (there are credit cards out there that never do this.)

Summary: There are better cards out there