Luke Sheldrick's Blog

The story with Barclays continues. You know how I had written back in Janurary, about how the saga of them cocking up my account, was a bit of a joke, but they had promised to fix their mistakes. Well they’re still on going, the latest being that they had setup a £200 payment from my current account, every month. Well the ‘Account Manager’ that set it up, set it up for 2 days after the due date, so immediately this was classed as a late payment, with all the natural charges and interest attached.

I thought enough is enough, so tried writing to the Chief Exec, usually you get a better class of monkey typewritter operator. On this occasion, I thought I had, got a letter back a few weeks later, stating that they were sorry… blah fee’s refunded…etc I thought, at last hopefully it’s setup correctly.

Nope, wrong! I checked my current account this morning, and what’s this, seems a bit lighter than I had thought it would be. FUCKWITS, they’re now taking the payment as this regular £200 jobby, and now a DD as well.

So it would seem, even the Chief Exec’s team, can’t even manage a simple task. Barclays, you suck.

Where to start… hmm Well last week was on a Red Cross 4 day First aid @ work course. Was quite a laugh, but scary how things have changed in less than three years.

There was two guys on the course, that really didn’t get a grip on first aid, and on a number of practice sessions, would have either killed you, or you’d never have walked again. They had to do the exam/test THREE times, and then they were passed. It really makes me think how unsafe first aiders could actually be.

Whilst on the course, I got to work with one young lady, who was pretty cool. In the end we exchanged details, now usually people would exchange numbers or at least email addys. Now it seems perfectly acceptable to exchange nothing more than full names. Why you ask, to find each other on Facebook. It seems that social networking has overtaken phones. I’m just waiting for a time where we all have some sort of unified social networking / mobile / email / address / ip address / voip contraption, would make life so much easier.

Friday saw me attending an interview in St Katherines dock, for a similar, but more technical role than I am currently doing. The interview was a technical interview, which I passed. I was invited back for a second interview on Monday, which seemed quite positive. Monday evening the agency confirmed that the company was going to make me an offer on Tuesday, which they did. Just awaiting my contracts, and my start date is 11th Feb. So 2008 looks positive so far. The only draw back is, there is no parking, so will be utilising the train. Which I guess with a bag full of gadgets, wont be too painful. It’s not terrible as I only have to get the train, and don’t have to venture on the tubes.

Also went for leaving drinks on Friday for my good pal Yinka, who is leaving us to go work for Betfair, so the team will be two down, which kinda sucks I guess for the existing team.

This morning was awoke by my ever ringing mobile, today it was Barclays, calling about my executive complaint. Seems I was 1000% correct on my thoughts, and was their error, which they are correcting, refunding charges and correcting my credit history. I ask myself, why could they have not resolved it like that on my initial call, and force me to write a letter of complaint?