Barclaycard - absolute jokers

zonker84

I felt I had to post this to warn people how this company operates. This didn't happen to me but my girlfriend so here goes.

Firstly, she was a student, who graduated recently. She has had a Barclays bank account for a long time, so got a student Barclaycard when she started university, with a limit of £350.

When she graduated she applied for a limit increase as she had a job with a decent income and so on. This request was declined, which to be fair, is up to Barclaycard. She always pays her bills in full, never misses a payment, and her Barclaycard was in credit recently after a balance transfer.

Over the past few weeks she tried to use it 2 or 3 times and it kept getting declined. There appeared to be no reason for this so she phoned up several times. They kept trying to put her through to a department, that never had anyone there. Today after my girlfriend's 5th or 6th attempt to phone them about this, she got through to someone.

They said her account had been closed as she "did not meet their company requirements". When she asked why, she was told this was confidential and that they couldn't tell her. They said they'd sent her a letter, which has never been received. Instead she's ended up looking a bit silly trying to use it but getting declined.

I do not get what is going on? Always pays off the balance in full, never missed a payment in the 4 years of the account being open, in full time employment and with a small credit limit anyway, yet they close her account without telling her because she "doesn't meet their requirements"? This is a very shoddy way to be treated.

My girlfriend was going to close the Barclaycard account anyway due to them stopping Nectar points and generally not being very good, but this has left her very annoyed. Has anyone else experienced anything similar with Barclaycard? It all seems stupid on their part really to me, but there you go :rolleyes:

Robert_Sterling_3

There are plenty of "other fish in the sea" in terms of Credit Cards for which your girl friend might apply.
Perhaps they are looking for a less financially astute user.

zonker84

Oh yeah, I totally agree, and she has opened up another couple of credit card accounts over the past couple of months which are far better.

My point was, why would Barclaycard do what they've done? I've never heard of them closing someone's account for no reason (that they would reveal) when they've done everything by the book regarding making payments and so on? Just seems bizarre to me and was wondering if it had happened to anyone else?

Also start this thread to warn people about how Barclaycard do business.

Rafter

I think Egg have been doing this with customers who put accounts in credit using balance transfers too.

It is a dead giveaway that you are a stoozer and therefore unlikely to ever make them any money. In those circumstances would you be bothered about upsetting the customer by closing the account?

R.

tattooed_lady

Maybe by being a regular payer etc she wasn't making them any money? It's out of order that they didn't notify her (even though they say a letter was sent) , I'd be mortified if I tried to use my card somewhere and it had been cancelled without my knowledge!

zonker84

Rafter wrote:

I think Egg have been doing this with customers who put accounts in credit using balance transfers too.

It is a dead giveaway that you are a stoozer and therefore unlikely to ever make them any money. In those circumstances would you be bothered about upsetting the customer by closing the account?

R.

Yeah, I told her this is what I thought the reason was too. To be fair, with a limit of £350, she had it nearly £350 in credit, so nearly 100%. I can't think of any other real reason for them to do what they did. To not inform her is out of order though, and to make it really difficult to talk about it with customer services was poor also.

The thing is she is not a stoozer, she just happened to get a Virgin credit card and it seemed silly not to take advantage of the 9-month 0% offer. She used it to pay off her other cards, but the Virgin limit was higher than her other cards combined limits, so she had to put her other cards into credit to take full advantage of the Virgin offer.

Oh well, as I said, it's no real loss as she was going to cancel her Barclaycard anyway, but they've just gone about it all in a disappointing way