Complaint to Barclays?

barlowsfr

Can anyone suggest a course of action.

We had to pay a IHT bill we sent a cheque but we were just a bit short in the account the cheque was from (though other accounts with Barclays had more then enough). On the day we saw this, we quickly transferred additional funds and rang Barclays who informed us that the cheque had not been presented yet and therefore there would be no problem so we did nothing more. However, the next day the cheque was returned because of insufficient funds and we were charged £8 for a returned cheque and daily interest on the IHT bill until a new cheque was sent. We spoke to someone at Barclays who could see it was their mistake and said we should log a complaint and get back any additional interest. We have done this but have now been told as it was a not a bank techincal error they will not pay any cost incurred, they say as there were insufficient funds in the account it was our problem (even though we were told the cheque had not been presented until after additional funds were transferred and this should no be a problem).

In short we acted on the information given by a Barclays employee and we are now suffering the consequences of their mistake.

Sorry for the long message but where do we go from here?

Many thanks

Rosie2404

I would write in to complain to them as I think if you write in the complaints get dealt with more throughly. My husband had a similar thing with Natwest where he was give incorrect information about direct debits going out and did eventually get the charges refunded but he had to phone up 3 or 4 times and complain. I think sometimes with these things it depends who you speak to (although that obviously shouldnt be the case as they should all follow the banks policies). My advice would be write a letter and follow it up with phone calls. Hope you get it sorted.

naijapower

Yes, it is a lot better to put your complaint in writing. Ensure you have a log of when you called and who you spoke to on the phone...it helps.
Whenever i call any call centre, i now have a habit of asking for the full names of whoever i am speaking to. This helps when any dispute occur in future