Woolwich/Barclays Bank

[SlackAlice]

I had a Woolwich savings account and a 'chip & pin' card which I could use to either make purchases from shops etc or withdraw cash from any 'Link' atm.
Along comes Barclays bank who takes over the Woolwich, and in their blurb to me in the post more or less says your account will be transferred over to them and everything will be exactly the same except the name. Fair enough thinks I, I'll see how it goes!
Today my shiny new card comes through the post and what do I find. Its not 'chip & pin' I cannot it use to make purchases anywhere, and i cannot use it in any atm except a Barclays one.!
I feel I've been duffed up good and proper here and now only have a very limited account. To add insult to injury the only Barclays atm local to me is forever running out of cash. The answer is simple I know (take your money out and go elsewhere) but has anyone else had this problem and what do they think of this roughshod treatment?

[SlackAlice]

Just thought I'd do an update.
Yes, you can upgrade to a 'chip & pin' card :)
But you have open a Current Account to do it :(
To open a Current a/c you have to have a regular monthly credit ie salary/wages paid in. To be honest the Woolwich a/c was a disaster/rainy day/holiday fund only and I paid in �40 a week via wage deduction.
I've already stopped any further payments going in, and will do a letter to them to close the account and WHY!
As an aside to this but very relevant, my wife works part time on a Till checkout for a well known supermarket. Since the new cards came out she has had quite a lot of people trying to pay for their weekly shop using them and none of them realising the cards useless for this.
Tempers were getting frayed, which is understanderable, bearing in mind you've just wasted 30 - 60 minutes shopping to be told you cannot have it! A lot of the people didn't have an alternative method to pay so had to walk away and find a Barclays atm