Friday, June 18, 2010

Ditched Helicoper Award - Barclaycard

I travel overseas a lot and,of course, I use my credit cards overseas. I have two - a Bank of Scotland business Mastercard and a private Barclaycard - which I've had for ever.

These days credit card providers like you to let them know when you go overseas to help with fraud prevention so every two or three months I call them to let them know my upcoming trips.
At BOS I get a charming Scottish lady who I get straight through to, who takes all the details down, we have a nice chat and it's all very painless.
However with Barclaycard it's got progressively more and more difficult. It was fine for a while , then the operative (when you finally get through to them after lots of button pushing and listening to things you are not interested in) told me she could only take down one country at a time and I would have to ring from that country to tell her the next country I was flying to!! I then asked to speak to her supervisor - who was helpful and took down all my information.

Now however - that doesn't work - and Barclaycard insist that you can only go to one country at a time - what nonsense. I tried escalating it up the tree and sending emails but you just get a standard response which answers none of your questions.

So after 30 years with Barclaycard I've now dropped them and gone to a Marks & Spencer Mastercard - who couldn't be more helpful. They give you a discount in their shops AND they don't even want you to tell them you are going abroad!

So a well earned DITCHED HELICOPTER AWARD goes to BARCLAYCARD - goodbye.


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I am an Oxford based Business Expert, International Speaker, Business Advisor, Author, Mentor and Consultant who (I am told!) inspires and entertains my audiences with my acclaimed 'Staying in the Helicopter®' series of keynote speeches, seminars, workshops and master classes focussed on transformational change and profitable growth. I am a former plc CEO, The Academy for Chief Executives Speaker of the Year and Past-President of The Professional Speakers Association. So what all that means is that I just love working with people helping them to grow and develop their businesses - from the smallest one-man start-up to the largest multi-national corporate. It's all about seeing the wood for the trees, getting up in my helicopter, and keeping it simple! I do believe that business is really simple it's just us human beings that make everything complex.