Barclays Deluged With Complaints Over New Investment Website

Barclays, the U.K. financial firm, is having a tough go of it with its new DIY investment website, with customers facing all sorts of problems from not being able to log into accounts to missing transactions.

According to a news report in The Financial Times, the new DIY investment website is a replacement for its stockbroking service, with it moving more than 200,000 customers over during the long weekend. The customers were moved to the new website, which is being housed under the retail banking unit, noted the report. The site is aimed at reaching more customers by providing access to more funds, passive investments such as ETFs and tools to help customers save more money. Its stockbrokers website had mainly focused on trading shares, reported the Financial Times.

The report noted that over the weekend, customers said they didn’t get their log-in details and that some transactions were missing from their accounts. What’s more, customers were on hold for as long as an hour trying to get in touch with customer service representatives at Barclays. Other customers said when they called customer service it was closed, even though it said it would stay open for another hour. Because of the influx of calls, Barclays had to move employees off the live chat feature to handle all the calls.

Barclays told the Financial Times it was aware of a technical issue when attempting to access their accounts and that in most of the cases, refreshing the screen should enable the customer to get access.

“We are doing everything we can to support our customers with the transition to the new service, including increasing the number of colleagues we have available to support with increased call volumes. We apologize for any inconvenience caused during this period of adjustment,” Rupert Dickinson, head of Direct Investing at Barclays, said in a statement.

As for customers who said they are missing transactions, Barclays said it’s more likely changes to limit orders that is causing the problem. The bank had previously told customers that limit orders wouldn’t be carried over to the new system and would have to be reentered, noted the report.