In December I applied for an M&S &More credit card in order to take advantage of their life-of-balance low interest balance transfer offer.
The card (but not my PIN) arrived at the beginning of January and I completed the paperwork to arrange my balance transfer.
After a week or so, I phoned up to check whether a PIN had been sent, and since I was on the line, to check whether my balance transfer had been processed. No, but they'd somehow managed to apply a balance transfer (which I had not authorised) from somebody else's card to my account! So, they said they'd cancel that, take the details for my balance transfer again, and send a PIN.
After about another week, still no PIN, and still no sign of my balance transfer. So I phoned again, only to discover no record of my PIN request and, hey, presto, yet another unauthorised balance transfer. So, I give them the details again, and they arrange to cancel the bogus transfer..
Fast forward to today, PIN has eventually arrived in the interim period, but still no sign of my balance transfer. So, I phone again. The call centre agent confirmed that the erroneous transfers had indeed been cancelled, and that my balance transfer had been processed, but not until at least a week after I had last phoned..
On this occasion, the agent also asked for what seemed like an excessive amount of 'security data': address, birthday, mother's maiden name *and* employer's name. While asking for one, or two, of these is normal, it seems a little over-the-top to ask for so much? Then, as the call progressed, he also asked for the expiry date of my card, and the Card Security Code. I refused to give the Card Security Code as, mindful of recent reports of data-harvesting operations at crooked call centres, I was under the impression that, similarly to a PIN, it should not be divulged, not even to bank staff, and the only time it should be given is on secure web forms for CNP transactions? I have to say, this does give me concerns that this call centre may not be as secure as it should be.
Frankly, I'm not impressed with this at all, and will be writing to M&S Money (assuming that the mail is actually answered in the UK and not South Asia[1]), to complain about the poor level of service their offshored call centre provides, *and* to M&S to let them know how this is damaging their brand (I know they don't operate M&S money, but any business needs to ensure that whomever it licences its name to meets the standards you would expect from under that name).
[1] If the staff in South Asia can do the job competently, professionally, honestly and securely, fine, but it seems that they're failing on at least one of these grounds..