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Downtime forces Barclays to change Coltrane advert

Customers' complaints have forced Barclays to amend its advert with comedian Robbie Coltrane in his pyjamas because of false advertising.

By Mark Graham

Published: 5 April 2001 11:04 BST

The ad features Coltrane, eating porridge and raving about the convenience of online banking, and being able to pay his bills in the middle of the night. In fact, this has proved not to be the case because Barclays shuts the service down for up to 20 minutes a night for maintenance.

The Independent Television Commission upheld the two complaints after customers logging on at midnight were not able to get through.

A Barclays Bank spokeswoman said only two per cent of its 1.9m online customers are affected at this time and maintenance is a necessity to continually upgrade the system.

She added: "It was never our intention to mislead the public."

The ad is being retained, however the false phrase has been dropped.

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