Every other day I get bombarded with financial junk mail trying to get me to take out a new loan, get a new credit card etc. At the end of the financial year they are mostly exhorting me to make the most of my tax allowances and invest in an ISA before it's too late. With all this money they spend on advertising you would expect them to make it as easy as possible to get their hands on your money ....... but not a bit of it. Having whetted your appetite, they then put as many hurdles as possible in the way to prevent you doing exactly what they were encouraging you to do shortly before.
On Saturday Mrs Journeyman and I went to Barclays to try to open an ISA account in her name (before it's too late). We thought this would be a simple process, taking out only a few minutes of our shopping trip to town. I had already primed Mrs Journeyman to make sure she had her photo-driving licence with her as it's well known that banks always want to know who you are and are never prepared to take your word for it, even if you go with a witness.
On enquiring at reception, we were told that they now operate an appointments system and there was a 40 minute wait. If we wanted an appointment we couldn't go away for a coffee and come back in 40 minutes time. We had to remain on the premises! We were ushered through to the waiting area which you could easily have mistaken for a dentist's waiting room. Forty minutes later we were summoned to a cubicle. Then the trouble really started.
Unlike any other bank I have been in, they didn't seem the slightest bit interested in seeing my wife's photo on her driving licence. They didn't even want to verify her address with a utility bill. This time they seemed to know exactly what we hadn't got ........ and that was what they wanted .... her National Insurance number. You know - the sort of thing that everyone carries around with them when they go shopping on a Saturday! We phoned home for someone to find it, but of course no-one was in. The man (surprisingly) was prepared to be flexible and allow us to phone it through as soon as we got home. But then there was another problem. We had a joint account at that branch and a transfer could be made from that. Unfortunately there was not enough money in that account to cover the full amount so I was intending to make up the difference with a cheque from my account at a different bank. "Oh no," said the man, "you can't do that! That's your money." He was afraid I might be exceeding my own ISA limit by paying some money into my wife's account. The fact that almost every other married couple in the country who have ISA's do this seemed to bear no weight at all. The fact that as soon as I wrote out a cheque with my wife's name on, it would technically be her money anyway carried no weight either. Nor did the fact that this account would be in her name so I wouldn't be able to get my hands on it anyway. The only solution, he said, was for me to pay a cheque into our joint account, wait until it had cleared, then go back to the bank and transfer it to the ISA. It didn't seem to worry him that as this was a joint account it would still be my money. He even said that my wife didn't have to go back as, once the ISA was set up, anyone could pay money into it! So that is what we had to do. After succumbing to their advertising which seemed to plead for our money, a simple job, which could have been done in five minutes or so, will actually take us a week to complete (and that's assuming that the cheque clears in time to get the money into the ISA in the outgoing tax year).
There seems to be absolutely no logic or consistency in the banking system, and absolutely no will on the bankers part to make the system helpful or efficient for the customer. With interest rates now down to virtually zero, I can see a mass return to people keeping their savings under the mattress. It takes no time at all to put it there and at least you know where it is!
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