Dear Barclays Bank,

I'm pleased to have this opportunity at last to write you, since I have the flu and am otherwise incapacitated.

I have been wanting to find time to do this for quite a while. In fact, since this summer, when I sent you two checks in the same envelope in payment on my credit card account, and only one was applied to my balance, resulting in a fee for not having paid the minimum owed, and subsequently, an exhorbitant raise in my interest rate.

You see, I had in fact paid well over the minimum amount due, via the two checks. Yet when I called to have the matter cleared, I was told BY A PERSON on the phone, that the computer cannot read more than one check from an envelope. Amazing. A machine can't do a humans job.

Well, I did a human's task in asking the person who had written me the check that was lost by the computer, to write me a new check in the same amount. This, of course, resulted in that person having to consider whether or not to make a "stop payment" on his account, which might result in a fee by his bank BECAUSE A COMPUTER AT BARCLAYS WAS GIVEN THE TASK OF ACCEPTING AND CREDITING PAYMENTS ON ACCOUNTS, BUT THAT COMPUTER WAS NOT CAPABLE, APPARENTLY, OF BEING ABLE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN ONE AND TWO CHECKS IN AN ENVELOPE.

This is fine; I perhaps must accept the FFM's admonition that I am the only person in the world who still signs checks that are written over to me to other parties in payment I owe them, and that I should be prepared when such things happen as happened between me and Barclays Bank.

Here is the part I am still having difficulty swallowing: When I spoke to A PERSON on the phone at Barclays and was told the computer is not able to carry out a human type task of being able to tell that there are two checks, and not just one, in an envelope, that same PERSON told me that she, THE PERSON, COULD NOT CARRY OUT A HUMAN FUNCTION OF RECTIFYING THE ILL CAUSED BY THE COMPUTER AND SETTING MY INTEREST RATE BACK TO A REASONABLE RATE. Do you know why? Because it is AN ELECTRONIC SYSTEM, AND ONLY COMPUTERS CAN DO THAT TASK, AND THE COMPUTER IS NOT ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM IT CAUSED AND TO RECTIFY THE SITUATION BY ADJUSTING THE INTEREST RATE. Yes, that is what your employee told me- the HUMAN employee.

So, I ask, why is it that THE COMPUTER CAN INCREASE AN INTEREST RATE WHEN IT MAKES A MISTAKE, BUT IT CANNOT SUBSEQUENTLY DECREASE AN INTEREST RATE IT HAS INCREASED because of its own inability to distinguish two checks in an envelope and apply payment accordingly to my account. And further, why is it that A HUMAN, WHO COULD COUNT TWO CHECKS UPON REMOVING THEM FROM AN ENVELOPE COULD NOT DECREASE AN INTEREST RATE MISTAKENLY INCREASED BY A COMPUTER?

I would like you to know, Barclays, two additional pertinent points to this case:

1) I have not had the same problem with other banks or companies. THEIR COMPUTERS CAN COUNT MORE THAN ONE CHECK IN AN ENVELOPE AND APPLY PAYMENT ACCORDINGLY.

2) I am not the only person who has had problems with Barclays computer and human personnel. I know people who have had store accounts: ie. LLBean and now refuse to use them because BARCLAYS PERSONNEL, COMPUTER OR HUMAN, CANNOT, OR WILL NOT, UNDERTAKE RESPONSIBLE ACCOUNTING. No, I am not even talking about cheating people to the point of running a bank into the ground so the public is obliged to bail its stinking remains out. I am talking about, for example, a friend who kept receiving notices he had not paid the minimum due, and receiving attendant fees for the discretion, when in fact, he had NOT paid the minimum due, but had paid MORE. And this happened for more than one month consecutively, until he finally got sick of yelling at the human employees at Barclay's and cut up his card and mailed it back.

This is not the only instance I can deliver, beyond my own situation, of Barclays Bank doing bad business, but I feel like I am going to throw up- whether because of the flu or the sour taste Barclays Bank give me- so I will wind it up for now, except to say,

I hope Santa pees in all your stockings, too, this Christmas, just as soon as he is done with B.Gates and before he pees in the stockings of the little jerkoffs who commit day-to-day rude acts.

Most sincerely,
Lisa Cox