UK banking giant Barclays has recently received the dubious honour of having the largest number of complaints out of all British lenders in the first six months of 2011, with a recently released report estimating the bank received a complaint once every minute.
More than 251,000 complaints were lodged against the personal and business bank account provider, and the bank admitted to being at fault in over 50 per cent of the instances. Meanwhile, the second-worst bank in the UK was found to be Lloyds TSB, as it racked up nearly 182,000 complaints according to the Financial Services Authority.
Spain-based banking giant Santander was also held accountable for the former Alliance & Leicester and Abbey which it recently acquired. The Spanish banking group amassed nearly 169,000 complaints in the the first half of this year, the FSA report revealed.
While Barclays was the one bank with the most complaints, the entire Lloyds Banking Group, which owns Bank of Scotland and Halifax, logged the largest number of complaints overall, with all of the banking group’s banks adding up to more than 300,000 complaints. However, Barclays, which was named the worst bank for complaints last year, has insisted that it has made progress in mending its ways.
Across all its banking products, almost 1,390 irate customers either made angry phone calls or penned scathing letters to complain about the banking giant’s service – a sum that adds up to nearly one every minute. However, this figure was actually 14 per cent higher in 2010 according to the official report – but Barclays freely admitted that they still have far to go before their customers are satisfied.
