So it's finally happening... Barclays about to de-bank me. Woo!

[WhoMe]

TBH I've been planning for months to get "friends" involved, as I don't want my own lifelong bank to be used anything other than a few eBay purchases. I meant to keep that bank completely compartmentalized and keep under £5k in there.

But I slept on it too long, I allowed my balance to pass £5k for a whole year and keep on growing. So now I got a letter asking me to verify my ID and a few international work transactions.

Here is where my shift towards anonymity in the past 7 years caught up with me while I procrastinated the past year... I still have a driver's license left over, but they want 2 IDs - I literally have nothing else from the list of IDs they accept. So I'm at a dead end.

I went to the branch and they just kept robotically quoting rules from their sacred regulator. No point debating with sheep!

Anyway, I'll have to open a new real life bank account, using my drivers license + Barclays statement. Any banks in the UK that aren't absolutely terrible?

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Barclays used to be the best so you can imagine the others. But my experience with UK banks dates back some time, I suspect it's much worse today.
Anyway, it's useless to argue with monkeys. Give them what they want: a good quality ID will solve the issue. Remember, all what they do is have a look and take a copy of it; box ticked, compliance satisfied.

You should probably also be fine with some EMI.

 

[WhoMe]

Barclays used to be the best so you can imagine the others. But my experience with UK banks dates back some time, I suspect it's much worse today.
Anyway, it's useless to argue with monkeys. Give them what they want: a good quality ID will solve the issue. Remember, all what they do is have a look and take a copy of it; box ticked, compliance satisfied.

You should probably also be fine with some EMI.

Whatever happens, I'm taking this incident to finally go the EMI route too.

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Whatever happens, I'm taking this incident to finally go the EMI route too.

EMIs are not any better than high street banks. As a matter of fact, sometimes in real banks you can befriend the right person, who will facilitate smooth operations.

 

[WhoMe]

Forgot to update this thread. I never heard from them since November so I assumed all was OK. Then 10 days ago, by whole balance went into "reconciliation" while they check for "money laundering". My account is totally clean. 5 days ago, the money was back in my account and I thought "phew".

3 days later, a letter comes through the door saying the account has been shut down.

I know it's just an evil bank and I shouldn't care, but I was kinda sentimental about an account I've had since I was 13. Anyway, move on, we mustn't let ourselves be defined by our account with bank cunts.

Their customer service said they'll send me the money to a new account elsewhere, or I can take out the cash. That's a lot of cash. Either way, I must wait until Monday because they don't do weekends.

 

[WhoMe]

Still can't get my money from them. I called them up to send my balance to my new account with another bank. But because they can only send max £10,000, they can't send my whole balance over the phone, so I have to go into a local branch.

"OK, transfer £10,000 to my new bank and I'll get the rest in cash later"

"No we can only do one whole transfer".

So I go to the branch. I'm far away from home for a month so I can't bring my physical drivers license, but I showed it to my own branch several weeks ago and they took scans. I told this local branch to check the records and I'm on there.

Not good enough for them.

I have images of my drivers license on my laptop (both sides) which I brought in to show them.

Not good enough. They want to see the physical thing to "prove it's me".

I reminded them of my recent KYC at my Barclays branch that proved it's me. Confirm with them.

Not good enough.

I brought in my card and PINsendry card reader, asked them to do a check and I can enter PIN, etc.

We can't access the account that way because it's closed.

"But you can access my account with just a drivers license?"

"Yes."

"But not with my actual card and PINsendry?"

No.

She then tried asking me security questions. I answered them, then at the end she said "It's not letting me me ask security questions".

Then why the hell were you asking me???

Back to trying to convince them to accept my drivers license.

"But why a physical license when we can open accounts online with images? Physical licenses can be faked, why would a physical license be better than photos?"

"We can see if the physical license is fake, we can't see from images"

"OK, then my own branch saw the unfakeable license several weeks ago and have it on record, including the scans. Please confirm with them"

"We can't do that".

OK, well I'm going to the Financial Ombudsman about this whole thing. Please let me file a compliant today so the Ombudsman can take it from there.

"Let me check... it looks like a complaint was already filed"

"I filed no complaint"

"It says you did on the phone"

"No I didn't. They gave me a physical address to write to for a complaint, I gave no details of my complaint over the phone. Let me file another, proper complaint here, with all the details"

"The system is not letting me record a new complaint, because it says one was already filed."

I walked away without my money, and no proper complaint lodged to take to the Financial Ombudsman.

These people are like dealing with robots, they're not humans at all.

 

[JohnnyDoe]

Nothing new: https://committees.parliament.uk/co...40000-business-accounts-closed-by-major-banks
They routinely do the same with personal accounts.
Useless to fight, useless to complain, it is how it is. Crypto solves it, banks will die by their own sword.

 

[WhoMe]

Nothing new: https://committees.parliament.uk/co...40000-business-accounts-closed-by-major-banks
They routinely do the same with personal accounts.
Useless to fight, useless to complain, it is how it is. Crypto solves it, banks will die by their own sword.

Yeah, I always kept minimal money in the banks. Only last year I let this account grow because I want to pay off my old student loan with a source of funds record. Then they do this right away.

I'm totally going to minimal bank usage once this is done.