By Julian Goldsmith, 26 April 2007 12:36
NEWS
Barclays Bank faces an Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) investigation over allegations of customer privacy breaches.
The ICO move follows a nine-month investigation by the BBC's Whistleblower programme into working practices at the bank's call centre in Sunderland and a branch in Guildford.
silicon.com Financial Services
Get the latest financial services news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the FS newsletter today!
The programme alleged staff were told to ignore customers' wishes about receiving sales information or being contacted by phone. The programme also claimed staff were told to introduce themselves as account consultants when speaking to customers, rather than their normal title of sales adviser. Call centre staff were also shown accessing customers' accounts without a valid reason.
ICO head of the Regulatory Action Division, Mick Gorrill, said in a statement: "The ICO takes breaches of people's privacy extremely seriously. For instance, making sales calls to people who have expressly asked not to be contacted is totally unacceptable."
The ICO has requested an explanation from Barclays, outlining why the bank's policies and procedures on direct marketing and access to customer accounts appears to have been "deliberately flouted by call centre staff."
Barclays said in a statement: "We take the allegations made by the programme very seriously and are conducting our own internal investigation. We are acutely aware that the trust between ourselves and our customers is the bedrock on which we do business. We will do everything necessary to stamp out anything that undermines that trust. We are fully co-operating with the information commissioner's investigation."
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
From what I can see, every member of Barclays staff has become a salesman. This became extremely irritating - go into a branch to cash a cheque, get harangued about some service or the other. I had thought that this had dropped off in recent months, but it appears from your article that the MO has been directed through another channel.
I will wait and see if I receive any 'unsolicted' calls trying to flog me some service that I don't want or am actually to old to buy.
As for the titles being used - well does anyone believe any of them these days - as soon as I hear most of then - I assume saleman working to a script read off a screen - try asking penetrating questions about the product!!
2. Richard
Not my experience:
Last month, Barclays phoned asking for my permission to phone me about offers:
I declined and Barclays has respected my wishes:
Since then, Barclays has continued to post relevant information - as normal.
However, separately, ghastly, pushy "Market Research" companies continue to flout the "Telephone Preference Service" (apparently it doesn't apply to them!).
I pay for the phone line rental: Companies should respect my wishes not to be contacted with such trivia - on my unlisted phone number.
3. anonymous
That Whistleblower programme was shocking.
It's difficult not to see Barcalys giving away 500,000 Card readers to their online customers as a sop.
So the British Banking industry can't be trusted and they foist Chip and Pin on with a strip on the back that still facilitates skimming.
So we have the police cautioning people for surfing on unsecured Wi-Fi broadband connections, whilst the Banks inability to remove the strip still leaves us open to fraud?
My elderly mother banks with Lloyds/TSB, she gets called once a year from her 'personal manager' - "no mum it's a salesperson".
I really don't appreciate my elderly mother being hoodwinked in this way.