Barclaycard risks the wrath of Scottish customers

Posted in 'Personal Finance' by Richard Catlin

15 May 2008

Credit card giant Barclaycard has caused outrage by announcing plans to axe almost 1000 jobs at a Scottish call centre.

The former Goldfish call centre in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire is threatened with closure just a few months after Barclaycard purchased the credit card and its 1.7 million cardholders, for around £35 million.

Barclaycard operates a number of other call centres in the UK and India. It plans to incorporate the Scottish operation into one or more of these. This is despite the company announcing at the time of purchase of Goldfish that it had no plans to do so.

The move has caused outrage amongst MPs and the local community, with the region having already suffered large numbers of recent job losses. Barclaycard claims that the move is necessary in what they describe as a “highly competitive industry”, but this is likely to do little to appease those who are losing their jobs, especially given the £540 million profit that the credit card division of Barclays earned last year.

Many people are calling for Scots to let their feet do the walking and to ditch any credit cards they have that are issued by Barclaycard. This includes the local council leader who said he “would not be surprised if the people of Scotland were to react negatively towards that organisation”.

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