Barclays Bank reverses its post office ATM decision because Brits revolted
Brits drive on the left. Spell it "colour"... And use post offices as ATMs. UK-based Barclays simply wants to cancel that last one. Earlier this month, the bank tried to save itself 10M pounds a year by announcing the end to its "free ATM" policy at all of the UK's 11.5K post offices. Then this happened:
- Outrage: Politicians, footballers, and loyal subjects felt betrayed by Barclays quitting the "Post Office Banking Framework" — a UK bank pact allowing fee-free cash withdrawals at post offices.
- Flip-flop: Barclays announced Thursday that it misestimated the decision's impact. So it caved, promising to stay in the POs for at least 3 more years.
- FYI: Turns out Barclays would've only saved 0.3% of its £3.5B annual profit anyway.
Upstate, the countryside, the shire... Low population density areas sometimes get neglected by businesses. Grocery stores, internet service, and even hospitals quit on rural regions because there simply aren't enough customers to make money. Even Barclays has closed 481 locations since 2015.
If you're going to announce something controversial, make sure you're committed... Barclays isn't following through on the post office retreat — so it won't save the money it was hoping to. But the damage to its rep is already done. It loses on both sides. It should've anticipated the outrage and then decided to do it (or not). Doing both, means you lose both ways.