Which Bank/Building Society/Credit Card has the worst Call Centre ?

For much of this year, I've

For much of this year, I've been having worstening problems using my cards while overseas. Online payments get declined... and I'm unable to draw on my funds at ATMs. It seems that every transaction from overseas is now being automatically blocked for manual review. I've spoken to Nationwide numerous time about this problem and they know very well that I spend most of my time out of the UK... yet they have ignored this and persist in manually reviewing every ATM transaction... This almost screwed me last week. I almost missed a flight because I was unable to get at my money when I needed it (I'd forgot to put some money in my backup accounts in Thailand). I'm tired of calling Nationwide to ask them why they blocked my card, it's expensive calling back to the UK and sitting in a BS call queueing system for ages, to then have to prove who I am over the phone and talk to an operator that insists my cards are being blocked for my 'own protection'..

Tesco

I used to have the same problems with my Tesco credit card - every time I went on a trip abroad, it would work for the first transaction and then get blocked. I had to phone them and get it re-instated. I called them to complain about it, and they said it was out of their control, since some intermediate card processing system was making the decsions, not them. This went on for a couple of years, and then just stopped. Presumably the 'intermediate' system got tweaked in some way.