Contacting Barclaycard, Barclays Bank and Life Assurance Companies impossible to obtain replies to letters and enquiries

It is becoming impossible to obtain replies to letters and enquiries made to the above companies about your own business matters.

Barclaycard and Mastercard started to produce their statements in a new format making transactions more difficult to read, wasting more paper, and omitting to put their business address on the statment as they had always done in the past. A letter to the company did not produce an answer and phone calls to their telephone numbers indicated on the statement meant joining a queue as the lines were busy and then running up a telephone bill. Furthermore there is no freephone number to report fraudulent or mistaken items appearing on your statement, it means making an expensive phone call which is anwered by machines and being held without resolving the problem. Have cut up one card and trying to find a better company in the meantime.

A letter to my own branch of Barclays Bank asking an important question did not yield a response by letter or phone call and I was obliged to telephone several weeks later in order to have my question answered.

Letters to very major Life Assurance Companies regarding personal matters did not obtain respnses and even a follow up phone call still did not succeed in getting an answer until I made a personal visit to the company's HQ.

To sum up: Why is it that major financial organisations are ignoring their customers queries and what right have they to ignore their letters and involve their customers in expensive telephone calls which even then are in the main are answered by machines while customers are held in queue, increasing their telephone bills?

I have only noticed this situation over the last year.