Unique IDs

Bloody fucking Barclays Bank, their internet banking service, and their unique ‘Membership Number’.

I don’t mind unique reference numbers – I really don’t. But I do wish companies – and today, particularly banks – would make them easier to remember. After all, it’s not rocket-science really.

My main bank, Royal Bank of Scotland use your date-of-birth, followed by a small, memorable unique number. I’ve never yet forgotten it, or had an issue with recalling it. It’s useful to both RBS and the customer. That’s how it should be done. It’s u

Barclays, on the other hand, have a 12 or 16 digit number, which starts off with either 2010 or 2020, and it has no fucking relevance to anything. In short, it’s an ID that is useful to Barclays, but not to the customer. And that’s just frustrating every time you come to need to use it.

In an absolutely ideal world, you let the customer choose their memorable number – it could be date of birth (although that’s easy to find) or something surreal like ‘Numberplate of first car owned’. Check that chosen ID, and if it’s in the system already for whatever reason, add a small number to it. No more than three digits. Simple, and memorable. It’s still unique in your own system (i.e. the bank’s database) so there’s no issues with replication or non-unique-ness, but it’s memorable for the customer too.

Except of course that banks in general still don’t operate on the principle that they should be a convenience for their customers (Note : not a public convenience, although God knows I’d like to piss all over them sometimes), rather than that their customers are there as a convenience to the bank. And I can’t see that concept changing any time soon, unfortunately.