I received an odd message in my inbox the other day. The subject line was “Barclaycard Remediation Alert – Action Needed”. Here’s what it said:
You are receiving this email because you are being asked by BarclayCard US to investigate and resolve the compliance alert outlined below. Log and track your response directly into PerformMatch, compliance monitoring and remediation platform, by selecting an action below and logging into your FREE PerformMatch account. Learn More
This notice concerns issues that require correction on URLs that are being monitored by PerformMatch on behalf of Barclaycard.
The financial sector is highly regulated. It is imperative that references to products are factual, clear and accurate. Refer to the brand as Barclaycard not Barclay or Barclays or other variation.
Please take the necessary steps to correct these issues within 24 hours.
The “compliance alert” apparently came about as a result of this years-old post where–prepare to have your mind blown–I referred to Barclaycard as “Barclay’s”. Maybe they think I’m still marketing their cards, so they have leverage? Beats me.
I understand that big companies want to take care of their brand equity. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that in this situation. The right way is to email somebody and say “Hey–huge favor here–would you mind changing X to Y? I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!”
The wrong way is to intimidate and threaten with legal action, which is apparently the next step. I wrote to PerformMatch:
Hi, I have a question: what is the penalty for failure to comply with this email?
Their answer:
The standard procedure if the issue is not resolved is a cease and desist letter from Barclaycard’s legal team.
I wrote a follow-up question asking what the Barclay legal team thinks of the First Amendment, but I have yet to hear back. That is where things currently stand.
In the meantime, my blog’s new policy is to avoid using the phrase “Barclaycard” when referring to Barcleecard, aka Berkleycard, the former issuer of the USAir card and current issuer of a popular PFD advice columnist.
I’m totally on board with this punk rock finance man.
Berkeley, barkley, barre-klay, barleecard, bark laid, berka lahey!
Your careless mistakes does not warrant a blog post but since it is now forever in the anals of the internet I’ll add this: though you are not, by any stretch of the imagination, a journalist because of the nature of the internet your words are readily available to anyone who seeks them out. In that, care must be taken in your part to ensure your mindless musings do not trespass on the brand and/or reputation(s) of any noun. I.e. person, place or thing. Your careless brings confusion to an already confusing world. The difference between PF, PFDigest and F-Digest is pretty clean I hope you would agree.
They started sending me the same e-mails a few months ago, it was also hilarious because even if you use ‘Barclaycard’ they still have words that are forbidden to be used on the same page (like pre-approved). They would send me e-mails asking me to remove stuff from the sidebar because it appeared on the same page Barclaycard was mentioned.
I eventually just told them to buzz off and haven’t heard from them again since. It’s always nice when big corporations threaten small bloggers into doing what they want with a legal threaten.
It’s not all punk rock here at PFD, let’s not forget hip-hop finance.
Genius!
Nicely done.
Maybe, once they’re done threatening people for being human, they can do something about their asinine fraud detection software.
I’m really getting tired of having to grab a different card because my A+ is denied. To add insult to injury, the canned response, once the FA is cleared is to “retry” the purchase. Which again gets denied.
I figured they were doing this to other bloggers. I like to make a big deal out of things like this to publicly shame them and hopefully deter them a bit.
Be careful calling it the A+ instead of the Arrival+, I might get in even more trouble…
If this costs us a single dime in revenue you are fired. Goddamn liability to our attempts to make good coin from Barclays.
Sweet! That means triple damages in my inevitable lawsuit vs. Burklykard.
Charles BarkleyCard
I assume ‘anals’ is not mispelled.
“turrible”
i never use their cards anymore. attempted to dispute a charge once and agent kept interrupting me telling me why they couldn’t do it, despite me never getting to the end of the explanation.
f ’em
Did a quick Google search on Titan (TM TBB) websites and it seems that others have had no problem making the find-and-replace changes, even though the Google results and urls still show “Barclays.”
Fun fact: the British pronunciation of Berkeley, as in George Berkeley, the British philosopher and namesake of that haven of hippies and layabouts in the Bay Area, is pretty much how we pronounce the last name of Charles Barkley.
My wife wanted a dog named Barkley. But we got a bitch – so we named her Barkleigh.
[IMG]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rJHxCTlkLbg/U1-_OgWXHeI/AAAAAAAAASI/KdWcG19TiKc/s1600/Turrible.png[/IMG]
Totally on your side, but what does the 1st Amendment have to do with this?
Their email cited bank regulation as a justification, so I figured I’d toss in the First.
Hate to rain on your parade, but there’s no threat in the letter you quoted. It’s a simple polite request, just like you suggested was the “right way” to handle such things.
The letter starts with “you are being asked”. That’s a request, not a demand or threat.
And it ends with “Please take the necessary steps”. Again a request, and they even said “please”.
Either make the changes they POLITELY REQUESTED or ignore it (as DoC and many other bloggers have done). There’s nothing threatening or newsworthy here.
And their response to your (pointless) follow-up question wasn’t a threat either. Neither stating that one may (or may not) send a cease and desist letter nor a c&d itself is a threat either. Though many C&Ds do contain threats of legal action, not all do. But the communications you’ve shared thus far fall well short of threatening.
Mentioning the possibility of a cease & desist letter because I call them “Barclay” instead of “Barclaycard” is a polite request? Are you fucking kidding me?
As an aside, the official name of the top tier English Football (soccer) league is the “Barclays Premier League”. Not the Barclaycard Premier League.
“Your careless brings confusion to an already confusing world.”
Say what now?
Moral of the story, barklaycard is a b…
Now that is funny
It’s too bad Skip Mcgee is no longer president of Barclays Americas. He writes letters to his son’s school like this
http://gawker.com/5415897/highest-paid-man-on-wall-street-ignites-culture-war-at-his-kids-prep-school
(full disclousure: I cheated off him in high school)