The world’s tenth largest bank, Barclays, is having to close down one of its branches in London for a very peculiar reason. The bank authorities realised that they were catering to just one customer for a while. The Barclays bank branch at Tower Bridge Road in Bermondsey, south London has just one dedicated customer, 84-year-old Peter Wisby and hence it is closing down. This has put Mr Wisby in a fix because the octogenarian does not use online banking and still depends on the traditional ways of visiting the bank for all banking activities.
Peter Wisby and his wife do not even own a smartphone and just have one basic cellular phone between them. Making and receiving calls and texting through SMS is pretty much all they use their phone for. Visby, who lost his leg in a road accident in 2003, has never used the internet and refuses to be a slave to technology. His grandkids, who got him the cell phone, have offered to teach him online banking now that his nearest branch is shutting down, but his answer is ‘No way’. The couple also does not use ATM machines as they believe they can be subjected to fraud.
Wisby does not even believe it when the bank says he is their only customer and says that they are lying. “They only spread a bunch of lies. People aren’t using banks, they claim, but that’s because they constantly put barriers in their path. Over the past year, they have purposefully closed the tills, only to reluctantly reopen them after I make a scene,” he was quoted as saying by The Metro.
The couple already had to bank further away from home when the Southwark Park Road Barclays closed a few years ago. Wisby’s wife Eileen says that it would not be possible for either of them to visit the next closest branch every week. “They mentioned in the letter the next closest ones were in Borough High Street or Fenchurch Street and it will be difficult for us to travel to either every week," she said.
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