Didn't expect to get this good a deal from a bank!

Pros: I’m currently insured with Barclays Car Insurance, and have to say I’m impressed! Firstly, I found them pretty good value - which is an important consideration. Secondly, and this is where it really counts, they handled my claim really well! I stupidly left my car for fifteen minutes parked in a shopping centre car park, while I nipped into ONE shop to buy a couple of magazines. When I returned, I discovered that some idiot had ploughed into the side of my car and made a really horrible mess of the side door, the wheel arch and the panel underneath the door. It was awful! Anyway, I rang Barclays and they arranged for their nominated garage to come out and inspect the car within a few days - then the car was collected from my house and taken off for repairs. I was left with a courtesy car, and after about 2 weeks, my little car was returned to me.

If I’m absolutely honest, it wasn’t entirely straight-forward, but I’m not sure any of the difficulties can be blamed on Barclays. Firstly, Barclays booked my car for the repair, and on the day I expected to to be taken in, it turned out that was just the garage coming round to appraise the damage. Then they collected it a week later, but the garage told me the work would take a week and in fact it took 2 weeks, then when it was returned they had missed a bit! However, they took the car back in without any quibbles at all, and fixed the bit they had missed, and in fact they re-spayed over a scratch that had been there when I bought the car, so in the end I was really happy! As I said, none of these little grumbles can really be blamed on Barclays insurance. The insurance people were great, they gave me a special phone number to ring so I could always speak to the same person if I had any queries on my repair, and they handled everything really well.

Cons: The only negative is that the phone number I was given was one of those 0845 or 0870 numbers - can’t remember which, but on my telephone deal I get charged extra for ringing any number that starts with 0845 or 0870. I would have preferred a normal landline number or a freephone number.