B-argggggghhhhh-clycard Fraud help !!

jay78

I've so far found out that two fraudulent transactions are pending on my account. However, the fraud team can't do anything about it until they actually go through! Rending my account overdrawn (without an agreed overdraft on it)!

Techbart

I too agree that the experiences recounted on this forum will be biased toward only those who have had an issue with Barclays. However, it's hard to ignore the fact that these issues have been repeated over the course of a year, and the experiences people are sharing are almost identical. To wit, 90% of Barclays call centres are based in India/Mumbai, who are either /very/ poorly trained, or are willing to misinform and lie to the customer in order to avoid confrontation, happy to let someone else deal with the problem.

My particular experience involved a loan company I deal with emptying my account, pushing me £470 over my overdraft of £10. However, I informed Barclays that this was a fraudulent transaction, after which they agreed to reimburse the transaction withing 12 hours. Being a customer of 12 years, I thought "wow, they really are a good bank"....that was until they re-released the funds to the same loan company 4 days later, despite the fact that I reported it as fraudulent.

After roughly 30 hours dealing with Debit Card Services, Customer Services, Fraud and Fraud After Care, I came to the conclusion that all of the departments are ill equipped to deal with matters of fraud. In fact, all the departments I dealt with (mostly Indian call centres) spent more time blaming the other departments and flummoxing at what their job for that particular department actually was, than dealing with "customer support".

From the little decent information I could get from the UK branches, it seems that no bank is allowed to release funds to any company that has been reported as making a fraudulent transaction. The fact that Barclays have not only breached FSA standards and their own internal policy, but completely neglected to protect the customer, makes me confident in saying DO NOT BANK WITH BARCLAYS. The simple reality to this is that Barclays would much rather save a bundle employing poorly trained Indian call centres, and then pay relatively small penalties from when customers get mistreated and seek compensation.

Satnav_2

I don't know if this will help, but I really hope it does.

I had a similar problem with Citi. They took over 3 months to send the forms out to me, lied to me, failed to take my complaint over the phone, told me the fraud was being investigated when in-fact it wasn't, charged interest on the fraudulent transactions even after the fraud was refunded, and failed to credit my account back with the right amount of interest.

I had to ask to speak to a line manager and then the fraud investigation team before they'd transfer me through and only after I spoke directly with the fraud team did a decliration form get posted.

In hind-sight if I had to deal with a poor customer service credit card company again I wouldn't trust the off-shore call centre to do anything correctly and trust very little of what they tell me. Ask to speak directly with the team handling the query, if they don't put you through ask to speak to a supervisor and try again. Ask for timescales on everything. The moment they slip over a timescale write to customer services asking why this has happened.

The one thing they did do was up my credit limit the first time I asked so that I could continue using my card. If you wanted to use the credit card on holiday that might be worth a try.

Satnav.