Brexit, Barclays & HSBC Banks – the final instalment

The irony of this advert is still not lost on me 😉 © Ricky Yates

The day after I wrote and published my previous post, I compiled another letter to Barclays, Leicester, pointing out to them what I wrote in that last post – that I cannot view their update to my complaint CRYX28K7KH because I have had no access to Barclays Online Banking since 27th August 2022 and that access requires a current debit card which I do not have.

Less than an hour after I returned home from sending that letter by registered post, my phone rang. The call was from a UK phone number unknown to my phone. After a brief message saying that the call might be recorded for quality control or training purposes, a female voice . . . → Read More: Brexit, Barclays & HSBC Banks – the final instalment

Brexit, Barclays & HSBC Banks – the third instalment

The irony of this advert is not lost on me 😉 © Ricky Yates

On Friday 2nd December 2022, I discovered that the age of miracles is not quite yet past. Forty-two days on from when I had made my request, there sitting in my mail box was a large envelope containing detailed statements of my now closed Barclays bank account. A week later, I set out as planned and travelled to the UK. Armed with those statements, together with my passport, on the morning of Tuesday 13th December I once more visited the 2 High Street, Nottingham branch of Barclays Bank to set about regaining access to several thousand pounds of my money.

Having explained at the downstairs front desk, what it was I wanted to do, I was told I needed to meet . . . → Read More: Brexit, Barclays & HSBC Banks – the third instalment

Brexit, Barclays & HSBC Banks – the second instalment

HSBC Debit card © Ricky Yates

Just one day after I wrote the first instalment of this saga, a letter arrived in my mail box. No, not the promised bank statement from Barclays, but a letter from the UK Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). It was a request for the completion and return of a ‘life certificate’ – putting it bluntly, the DWP wanted me to prove that I’m still alive!

The letter arises because I don’t live in the UK. The DWP fear that when I do ‘pop my clogs’, they will not necessarily be told and will be paying out pension to a dead person. I have had a request of this nature previously and have also once signed a life certificate for a member of the St Clement’s, . . . → Read More: Brexit, Barclays & HSBC Banks – the second instalment

Brexit, Barclays & HSBC Banks

Earlier this year, I received a letter telling me of another wonderful ‘benefit’ of Brexit. The letter came from the headquarters of Barclays Bank, with whom I have banked for over forty-seven years, and told me that in a few months time, I needed to close my account or otherwise, they would do it for me at the end of August 2022.

The actual explanation was that, ‘We’re applying limitations to the banking services we provide to customers with an address in the European Economic Area (EEA). We’re sorry to say this means we need you to close your account’. This was Barclays polite way of saying that, now the UK was no longer a member of the EU, they were not prepared to go to the expense and trouble of setting up a legal entity in . . . → Read More: Brexit, Barclays & HSBC Banks

More about the wedding of Phillip and Lisa

My postcard. Photo © Ricky Yates

One of the delightful features of Phillip and Lisa’s wedding were the individual touches they created that made every guest feel welcome. One of these was a named envelope, marking the place where each person was to sit at the reception, which contained an illustrated postcard with a personal message on the back.

Apparently, during her childhood, Lisa spent numerous holidays in Skegness, a traditional British seaside resort on the Lincolnshire coast. Phillip recreated his own version of a famous 1908 poster by the illustrator John Hassall (1868-1948), produced for the Great Northern Railway, declaring that ‘Skegness is SO bracing’.

Here is mine, declaring that Coventry, the city of my birth and the first eighteen years of my life is, ‘SO bracing’ 🙂 Whilst the artwork is a . . . → Read More: More about the wedding of Phillip and Lisa