Barclays lied about charges

ashleyandbarry

Our Barclays account was into the overdraft, at it's £500 limit, and last year they put a 'reserve' feature on it of £250. We recently went into the reserve, which incurred several fees, which my husband went into the branch and paid. He cancelled all direct debits coming out, and then asked if he'd cleared everything to get us back into our regular overdraft, and if any new charges would be coming out, and they assured him no. About a week later they sent a letter saying we'd gone back into the reserve, when the interest on the overdraft had been charged to our account, which incurs a charge of about £20 every few days, which then puts you deeper into the reserve, which gets you more charges, and on an on. We now have about £100 of fees they want us to pay. We've spoken to the branch manager, 2 customer relations people from Barclays, and they all say we have to pay it. We think that's outrageous, since we were ASSURED that NOTHING would be coming out of the account, and if they'd told us that something like £5 of interest was going to come out and put us into the reserve, obviously we would have paid it before that happened. The most recent person we spoke to said that the branch staff were right, that nothing 'new' was going to come out, because those charges had already been incurred. If that's true, why hadn't they applied them to our bill at that point? Is there anything we can do to fight this? We do not want to pay for their lies.

dc110

If that's true, why hadn't they applied them to our bill at that point

pretty standard practice - a charge is incurred, then you are notified, then it is debited.

Presumably at the time in question you had incurred the interest (because you were overdrawn) but it hadnt been debited.

Maybe could have been explained better but technically sounds to me like they havent done anything wrong

CLAPTON

I would drop the word 'lied' and see whether they will refund on a goodwill basis as you genuinely misunderstood the situation.

It's normal for interest to be accrued on a daily basis but only added to the account at the end of the month so the staff wont be able to 'see' the interest figure until its been calculated at month end.. just like credit cards etc.

They should have been able to warn you about this but it's quite likely they don't really understand how the system works either.

willo65

I would have to agree with above posts and clarify that in answer to your question to barclays of "Is there any more charges" they correctly answered no and you should have been aware of when debit interest hits your account.