Barclays Bank

...coming from. I hold the Barclays account jointly with my husband (it was originally his and I was added on to it when I found out that as a new arrival I can't get a 'normal' bank account here immediately) and we use it as our main household account. Apart from that I also have a Smile current account (see relevant review) which I use in parallel as my personal current account as well as the basic (card cash) account with Halifax. I have Internet ...
...I had my very won Barclays Connect card and was free to use the account.

Since then our standard Barclays Account became - somehow inexplicably - Barclays Additions account, and then, by our conscious decision, Additions Plus.

*EXTRA ACCOUNT FEATURES*

Additions Plus is one of the recently mushrooming premium accounts, which means that for a monthly fee you get a plethora of added-value benefits, some ... more

This review relates only to the CURRENT ACCOUNTS provided by Barclays, especially the Additions Plus account. There is no special category for these and general reviews seem to concentrate on that aspect of banking service.

I will start briefly explaining my situation, so it's clear where my comparisons and judgements are coming from. I hold the Barclays account jointly with my husband (it was originally his and I was added on to it when I found out that as a new arrival I can't get a 'normal' bank account here immediately) and we use it as our main household account. Apart from that I also have a Smile current account (see relevant review) which I use in parallel as my personal current account as well as the basic (card cash) account with Halifax. I have Internet access to all three and I use them in that format regularly.

We have a several hundred pounds overdraft which we run perilously close to the limit, we also try to pay whatever bills are possible by direct debit or standing order. This means that we find ourselves getting over the limit all the time and the ability to pay money in quickly as well as the way the bank deals with charges is of paramount importance to us. This also means that we are almost never in credit and thus the interest rates paid by the account are not important to us.

*APPLICATION*

This was laughably easy. I didn't even need to show an ID with a photograph, my marriage certificate was enough to add me onto my husband's account and in few days I had my very won Barclays Connect card and was free to use the account.

Since then our standard Barclays Account became - somehow inexplicably - Barclays Additions account, and then, by our conscious decision, Additions Plus.

*EXTRA ACCOUNT FEATURES*

Additions Plus is one of the recently mushrooming premium accounts, which means that for a monthly fee you get a plethora of added-value benefits, some of them usually more useful than others.

I am not familiar with particular benefit packages offered by premium accounts from other banks, the basics idea seems more or less the same (better interest, insurance, road recovery etc) and if you are starting with no account or just a basic account it's worth to shop around for the package that will have the combination which is most attractive to you.

Barclays actually offer two premium accounts, Additions (for £9.50 a month) and Additions Plus (£12). If you are going to plump for one of them, I think that Additions Plus offers significantly better package for much only a little bit more money.

1) Worldwide family multi-trip insurance from Norwich Union: that means that we never have to bother to arrange it, and it has very reasonable levels of cover, and includes things like skiing and sailing . They claim it's worth £160 a year, I am sure it's possible to find something cheaper but still this benefit alone probably makes up for a lot of the £144 we are paying annually.

2) Total Protection breakdown cover from Green Flag. Granted, it's not AA which was our breakdown cover provider of choice before, but then it works (we used them twice and though response time was crap we eventually got there and once we even received a cheque for £10 because help took more than 60 minutes to arrive). The package it's pretty impressive, including home start, towing anywhere in the UK, replacement car for 14 days and they claim it would cost over £150 from Green Flag (and even the basic cover from AA costs £89). We have (and probably for a foreseeable future will) have an old, clapped out Diesel and thus sleep much better knowing that we have such a service to back us up if we need it.

3) Up to £250 interest and fee-free overdraft plus 9.9% EAR interest on what's over £250. This means that we pay less interest on our £700 Barclays overdraft than I pay on my significantly smaller Smile one.

4) £10,000 accidental death cover from Royal & Sun Alliance. This isn't really a crucial element as it's not very expensive and for a long time I used to have a much better and larger, free life insurance policy with my employer, but as just-in-case thing is a good thing to have.

5) Service that allows you to register all your cards (not just Barclays) as well as passports and provides one-stop-recovery shop in case they are lost.

On top of these it also offers number of benefits that we have no particular use for but they are there and might be attractive to some people: Domestic emergency cover (w rent so this is only of a benefit to the landlord) , a 24-hour legal helpline with tax advice, will-writing service, online access to the stock market with Barclays Stockbrokers MarketMaster, exclusive access to Fixed Rate Savings Bonds. Only recently the added 20% discounts on many family days out, discounted children health insurance, mobile phone and pet insurance.

To summarize, just the motor recovery, travel insurance and extra interest on overdrafts would cost us more than we pay for the account - overall it' s a good value package, of course *providing you would really buy the services anyway elsewhere*. This is important, as otherwise you end up paying for things 'just in case' and losing money overall.

***INTEREST AND CHARGES ***

Barclays offer branches, telephone and internet banking. The only situations we use telephone is to query things that go wrong or to beg for charges reversal, and our everyday running of the account is done face-to-face or online.

1) The interest rate while the account is in credit is abysmal 0.1%. This doesn't bother me much, as we are never in credit for long enough for it to matter. People operating in substantial credit should consider this, though. I would go as far as to say that if you on average in credit I can see very little point in getting any of the Barclays current accounts at all.

2) The interest on overdrafts above £250 is 9.9% EAR which is comparable to other banks (I pay the same in Smile).

3) They will let you get A LOT above the overdraft limit via card or cashpoint. Barclays let you get over the limit by more than £200 (the most we did was about £400 over the limit) which *is* a short-term lifesaver. Provided you can pay money in on the day or before what you spend clears, it's actually a good thing, despite a big palaver about it recently in the papers. If you are not careful, you will get charged.

4) As for now, Barclays charge a whooping £25 for getting over the limit, once a day, up to three times in a month. I have to say though, that in the last year of operating like that the only time we have been charged was when we were on holiday in Greece and didn't make it back in time to rectify, and even then they eventually agreed to reverse two of the three charges. It has been usually possible to talk ourselves out of 2 of each 3 charges if we incurred them, but even £25 is a lot! But there is no daily charge. Overall I think thay are worse than some but better than others on the charge front. There is also a small buffer zone (I think it's £10 which means you won't get charged £25 for getting over by 50 pence which happened to me few times with Smile).

5) They allow you to immediately draw money against uncleared cheques and they count these cheques against your overdraft limit. This means that once a cheque is paid in, it appears on your transaction list and only if it bounces it will be deduced again. I love that facility which makes it much easier to avoid charges and takes away all the pain from using cheques. Our cheques come mostly from very reliable sources (Inland Revenue, Council, Mother in Law) and thus we can do it no problems.

6) They don't charge for withdrawals from any cash machine in the UK (and were the first not to).

7) Barclays Connect card can be used to withdraw money at Post Office counters, you can also pay cash in, though it will not register immediately and thus in an emergency you need to go to the branch.

8) They offer amongst the most competitive charges for paying in foreign currency (at least US dollar) cheques. They are still stupidly high, though, but better than some banks, especially building societies.

*** INTERNET, TELEPHONE AND BRANCH BANKING ***

I like Barclay's internet site. Access is through a customer number which can be saved on your computer, 5 digit pin-code and a password with drop-down letter menus (presumably too fool key-stroke tracking devices). Transactions can be viewed and direct debits, standing orders and all usual transactions can be performed through the website without particular problems, though the site tends to be slow(ish) so it might be bit cumbersome on a dial-up connection.

The internet site is also the only place where you can actually see - in real time - the state of your account on which possible charges might be based, meaning is shows every payment that came out PLUS it takes into account uncleared cheques. The balances shown via cashpoint or branch-requested slips don't do that!

The only problem I have with the online facility is that it only allows you to view 30 days of transactions, which for a person as prone to loosing or accidentally binning statements is a bit of a problem as copies cost £5.

As said before, we don't use telephone banking but sometimes contact Barclays customer services regarding charges or untoward happenings like supposedly cancelled direct debits that are still going through and similar. They have now a centralised call-centre but people working there are not completely hopeless and are able to deal with basic issues (and reverse our charges) without too much palaver.

We use a local branch in Dover (our account is originally in Hull but that doesn't seem to make any difference) and although the people behind the counters are courteous and friendly, they don't seem to have much authority to do anything. Phoning the call centre seems to be a better way to achieve things than visiting the branch which as far as I am concerned is only good to (a) pay the cash and cheques in to get them credited quickly (b) try to sell you new products. I had a problem with a cashpoint once (non-Barclays one) which didn't pay out money I desired despite debiting my account and even for such a simple query I was send to telephone somewhere rather than dealt with at the branch.

The staff at the branch don't even seem to be terribly well informed about the way the accounts operate. Once I was told that even though I paid a cheque in on a day my account got over the limit, I would still be charged as the 'cheque has to clear'. This is utter rubbish (see previous chapter) and considering that the rule about treating cheques 'on trust' was introduced by Barclays about 5 years ago, I thought it appalling that a staff member didn't understand it. I was also offered - repeatedly - a Barclaycard credit card application despite the fact that I had no UK address for last three years and I was refused once already.

VERDICT

Overall I am reasonably happy with Barclays, however unfashionable it might be. They are nothing special, granted, and they are a Big Bad Wolf of a bank with an eye to Get Your Money by getting you more in debt, but then all banks do that including the likes of ethical Smile.

The package of benefits provided by Additions Plus account can be of some value (though there might be one somewhere else that is better for you), especially for people who buy annual travel insurance and want full-package road recovery service.

Their somehow lax approach to overdraft limits and the fact that they let customers go over by several hundred pounds before the account is blocked would (and probably will) get condemnation from the regulators, but from our point of view it's a godsend.

If I was to pick the best feature of this (or really, any) Barclays current account I would say that treating cheques as real money unless/until they bounce is probably the one I find the most useful.

The internet banking facility is good, and would be even better if more than 30 days worth of transactions were accessible.

Customer service is pretty average, so far we had no disasters and nothing to particularly commend either.

I would recommend a Barclays current account for people who tend to operate in overdraft and close to the limit but get easy access to the Internet banking to monitor the account as well as those who pay in many cheques and often urgently need access to the cheque money. I would advise anybody who contemplates purchasing annual travel insurance and motor recovery services to check if a premium account - Additions or another one - wouldn't offer similar benefits for a better price. Those who operate at a substantial credit should definitely look elsewhere.

 

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