Back to basics – account-opening failures

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This year we’ve heard a lot about ‘the customer experience’ and how important it is to get the ‘customer journey’ right, and yet some platforms are still struggling to get the account-opening basics right.  Two platforms in particular come to mind, Barclays and Fidelity.  

Barclays has just launched its Barclays Direct Investing which will apparently ‘make investing easy’, and yet my experience has been anything but. I have been trying to open an account with Barclays for nigh-on two months and I am close to exploding with frustration.

I first opened the account in October and shortly after went on holiday. By the time I’d returned, the account had been suspended because I hadn’t completed the bank verification process in time, so I had to start all over again. To save time I rang customer services to ask them to reactivate the account, and when that didn’t work, copy and paste my information into a new application. This turned out to be just as problematic because they got my name wrong and I couldn’t login.

The problem was eventually sorted and the next step was the bank verification process. Unfortunately, Barclays’ processes are stuck in the dark ages; I had to provide one of the following:

  • An original or certified copy of a bank statement issued in the last six months (it cannot be an online statement unless it’s been certified). The statement must contain my full name (no initials), sort code and account number.
  • A letter from my bank confirming full name, sort code and bank account.
  • A BACS payment from the nominated account.
  • A cheque.

I sent a BACS payment twice and each time it was rejected. Barclays rejected them because my bank had only attached my surname to the payment and my first name was missing. As I have a particularly long name it was no surprise that it had been truncated, but Barclays wouldn’t have it.  It insisted I contact the bank and ask them to re-send the payment (?) before eventually conceding that this might be impossible if the system is automated.  In the end, I had to resort to sending a cheque (thank goodness I still have those).

But to make matters worse, the email I received (see below) was pretty substandard. My gender is wrong, my name is misspelled and the link they provide does not work. So far they have singularly failed to cover themselves in glory. Quite the opposite in fact. Barclays would undoubtedly argue that they’re protecting customers, sticking to money laundering rules,  yada yada yada, but why can other platforms get it right and Barclays gets it so wrong?  I persevered, but I’m sure many investors would have given up a long time ago.

barclays-opening

Unfortunately it’s not the only platform to make things difficult for customers. I really, really want to open an account with Fidelity Personal Investing. I like the look and feel of the site and I like the customer journey. It starts off by exploring what you’re saving for before guiding you towards a type of account (ISA, sipp, investment account etc) followed by the investment options (pathfinder funds, the recommended list of 50 funds or the full-blown list of investments in the supermarket).

I chose my account type, spent a long time choosing funds and then tried to open my account… and that’s where I ran into problems. Unbelievably, my surname is too long for the site. The UK is a multi-cultural society with names of all sorts of shapes and sizes, and yet Fidelity only allows 15 characters for the surname.  Don’t believe me? Fidelity didn’t at first. But below is a picture of my attempt to put my full name in. You try it and see for yourself.

fidelity-online

 

I rang Fidelity Customer Services who rang IT who insisted I was wrong. For quite a while I was treated like a Luddite until I insisted they try to open an account with my surname, and then the penny dropped. That was two months ago; I was told that it would be corrected immediately and they would let me know when it was fixed, but I’m still waiting.

These two providers are well-known and well-established so it’s a crying shame that they haven’t put more thought into their account-opening basics. We’ll be telling you about the customer experience at other D2C platforms in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out.  Trust me, they don’t make pretty reading.