I was on Barclays a few years ago. Horrible bank. Awful customer service. Basically... A few weeks ago I recently tried opening a savings account with Halifax and was denied and was told to contact CIFAS and request some information about why i was denied. From what i am gathering i must have some sort of marker on my account. I am assuming it was an incident that happened when i was with barclays. i was 17/18 (22 now) and i lost my card at a club event. I received a phone call from Barclays telling me there was fraudulent activity on my account. So I then went on to cancel the card (obvious thing to do) and thought nothing of it for the next month or so. Only for my account to be closed without any formal explanation. Only that they had "conducted an investigation and decided to close the account". I tried calling the customer service line multiple multiple multiple times with no success. No one would even speak to me. I was in 1 hour+ call lines and when i finally got through, i was put on hold only for the line to just hang up. (clearly the advisors just didnt want the trouble) I tried calling back and it was just the same process same thing over and over. Eventually, i just gave up. I googled every possible person i could get in touch with to help me in this situation and i couldn't find a single thing. By the time i found out about the ombudsman service, i was all tired out and just felt defeated. I felt like no one would listen and in that in all honesty, they wouldn't listen either. Being 18 I had no clue of the implications of this in the long term or else I would have pushed it a lot harder. I eventually opened a prepaid account and have been using that since. (cashplus) When applying for accounts i would always get denied with absolutely no explanation and i have always wondered why. I have had many credit checks over the years and I haven't seen anything about a CIFAS. Only recently with this savings account has any bank even vaguely mentioned a reason as to why i got denied. I honestly wish I knew about organizations like CIFAS and Ombudsmen when this whole ordeal initially happened. Barclays never investigated or if they did they they clearly didn't do anything properly. The customer journey when going through a situation like this is awful and you won't get any help. You're lucky if you even get contact at all. They just throw you to the wolves and wash there hands. Pray you never ever get into a situation similar to this because it will impact you for the rest of your life.