Stupid bank policies

[milly143]

Why is it you can't do anything on the phone to barclays bank without a stupid pass code. I always lose them and rarely have the time to go to the bank in my lunch hour but Barclays insist I cant do anything over the phone without it. It's soooo annoying! Why cant they just ask me security questions.

[Hermia]

Probably because the security questions people choose (mother's maiden name, town of birth etc) could be found out/guessed by other people?

[spudqueen]

Many years ago I used to work for a Bank and one day we had a phone call from another of our branches saying one of our customers was in there and wanted to withdraw �1000 cash, which they weren't happy to do as obviously they didn't know him from Adam. Luckily this was one of our more 'popular' customers, so to identify him we said they should ask who he had sent valentine cards to a couple of weeks earlier. They said he'd burst out laughing when they'd asked the question and answered correctly, Jill and me, so they let him have the cash!

As many less people go into their branches these days and are therefore not really known by their branch staff I suppose a pass code is a good idea.

By the way Hermia, if we needed to identify other customers we usually asked them things like when did they open their account, what standing orders have they got, things that other people couldn't guess!

[stevie21]

The only bank that I know of that is happy to accept asking you security questions such as standing orders etc. suffers MUCH more fraud that the others who insist on passcodes.

Be grateful that they're protecting your money and make a superhuman effort to remember what your own passcode is.
If a fraudster phoned Barclays and managed to remove money from your account just because they knew some limited details about your account I'd expect you'd be livid at the lax security in place??
Who would be out of pocket at the end of this fraud? :
a) you
b) the bank

No prizes for guessing

[butter1]

I know, it annoys me too.  i'm always loosing the pass code.  I do everything online now, it's much easier.