Recently, I was doing a round of credit card applications for my parents. I was getting “them” the old amex blue and the Barclay Arrival cards, though the cards were going to be mostly for my use (and of course my parents are going to score some free/discounted trips out of the deal). I managed to piss off Barclay pretty well because of the applications.

I was working on applications at the end of the day after I got all of the info I needed from my parents. I applied for the amex cards first and got instant approvals for both, then applied for the Barclay cards and they both went into pending status, which I consider to be normal from Barclay.

A few days later my mom tells me she got a weird call from Barclay where they were asking her to verify a whole bunch of information, but at the end of the call they did approve the card. Over the next week or so I asked my mom a few times if she had heard anything from Barclay about my dad’s card, with a nope every time. Weird, I thought. At first I thought it was because I had applied for an arrival card for both of my parents and added myself as an authorized user on both cards during the application process, that turned out not to be the case.

A little while later, my mom gets a letter in the mail from Barclay, asking her to call them before they will approve her card. Super weird, I thought.

I had set up the email correspondence for the cards to come to my email, so I started looking back towards the application date for the cards. Lo and behold, two emails from Barclay stating that the application had be received… addressed to my mom. Well, I figured out what the problem was there… guess I shouldn’t be working on applications late at night anymore! I thought that was the end of that.

I was wrong.

A few days later I was trying to set up the online account for the card, but couldn’t! I was told to call Barclay’s customer service, and since I had all of the information  I just decided to do it even though it is technically my mom’s account. They asked me to verify a whole bunch of information, and then told me that I had to take my (well, my mom’s) driver’s license and the card into a bank and have them swipe it like they were going to do a cash advance, and then they would see a number to call Barclay.

Well, I couldn’t take care of that part for her.

Yesterday my mom went to our local bank, but they didn’t have the right type of cash advance machine to do it. Next she made a couple phone calls and found a bank that was able to help, and she went. The teller and Barclay got on the phone, and there was a whole bunch of verification going on… but they eventually figured out the problem. The application had gone through with my mom’s SSN, my dad’s birthday, and my dad’s mother’s maiden name. Even after Barclay called my mom to verify the information! Obviously some of the problem was my fault for submitting two applications under my mom’s name with conflicting information, but Barclay definitely didn’t fix the situation up front either.