Id Fraud and Barclaycard nightmare

dylansmum

Hi

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum and for length but I wanted to share this about Barclaycard. I have posted on the DFW as me and OH have battled and won (almost) our debt mountain. In the midst of this battle my OH was the victim of major identity fraud. It involved the Post Office as the persons doing the fraud were stealing post and getting hold of the actual plastic cards. My OH has a gender neutral name so the various cards (Halifax, RBS, Goldfish – and on – ten in total) were taken out as a Mrs. We had no clue to this has we got none of the post (stolen before it arrived) until Halifax Fraud rang us as we have our mortgage with them to alert us – thank God for someone there! We called police but as OH not victim, only banks then couldn’t take action on fraud. They did, however, take action on stealing of post as this is a crime against OH. So far, no one found – though all transactions were done local to us and obviously involved PO worker or private company contracted at some stage in sorting. Whoever it was got OH’s birth date and everything right (from stolen post) – apart from gender (his title is dr as he has a PhD so they assumed a woman due to his name).

It took weeks to sort out mess. But most banks were fine once he’d sent them copies of his passport and credit ref agencies updated his files to show it had been fraud. The persons involved managed to get 50K worth of credit – which is incredible in itself. But then Barclaycard nightmare. OH (as Mrs) was billed by them for 3K (sending out to our address to ‘Mrs’) and this post got through. OH phoned them and followed procedure as with other banks. No luck – ignored our letters/kept cocking it up. Then a debt collection agency started writing to ‘Mrs’ OH at our address. OH was on the phone nearly every day between March 2008 and May and in spite of being told by Barclaycard that the matter was cleared, the debt letters kept coming. Then – wait for it – Oh has a current account with Barclays and Barclaycard took 140 quid out of his account (which they can do if you are in debt to them). OH went to bank with crime reference stuff and all correspondence and they said sorry and would sort it. We filled in official complaint – they replied saying sorry and sorted – but still no refund! First, how stupid can they be! Oh is a MAN and they still took his money to pay off a phantom ‘Mrs.; Nothing but more letters. But no refund. Finally, OH took this to Ombudsman. Last week they gave him back his money – but they have had it for a year! Ombudsman happy to carry on with compliant to seek compensation – and damn right we are. We needed that money and feel Barclaycard should pay a bit of interest – and all our phone calls and letter. If the others got it sorted quickly, why couldn’t they?

So beware Barclaycard customer ‘service.’ Sorry for rant!

Robert_Sterling_3

Interesting.

jonesMUFCforever

Absolute disgrace if something as simple as this had to go as far as Ombudsman to sort out!

dylansmum

hi

Thanks for seeing it our way. We waited nearly a year before we took it further. Needless to say Oh is closing Barclays account. Shoddy service and lots of worry - especially debt agency harrassing 'Mrs'! We've had NO letter from barclaycard explaining how it all went so wrong - just an intitial letter from the Ombudsman saying complaint upheld and money back in account and would we like to proceed further. The least we expect, really, is some formal apolgy in writing! Having to pay for copy after copy of passport and other ID, phone calls ect - it took loads of time, some cash and lots of worry. Do banks get fined for this type of thing? Oh I hope so...

never-in-doubt

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

Absolute disgrace if something as simple as this had to go as far as Ombudsman to sort out!

Spot on - what a joke and Barclays should be ashamed of themselves..... name and shame them, get to bbc.co.uk/watchdog and see if they'll take up your story - always looking for juicy bank gossip....