My Portuguesegirl' friend is being charged average £160 pm!!

dominicmcg

HI,

My Portuguese 'girl' friend has been living in London for 4 years now and she has been in full time employment since arriving. She is a very honest girl and has always paid her way and never been in so much debt like she is at the moment and i think the bank are abusing her status.

Less than a year ago she was offered a overdraft of £1000 which she accepted beause she has very good credit and knows how to manage her money, this helped her move to a bills all inclusive flat. But, after some months she managed to reach the limit of her overdraft and obviously incurred some charges when money was taken out that she didn't have. Her wages and any other money she receives is paid into Barclays and after som time they sent her a letter to say that they can put a £500 reserve on her account, so £1000 overdraft and £500 reserve. She didn't agree to the reserve but they put it on anyway and in her current situation and the charges she paid and bills se ended up into the reserve.

The problem is that, some months ago the company she is working for changed her from full-time to 12 hours per week and she has been struggling to find another job. Since then she has been unable to meet some of her payments for rent and certain direct debits, but she has always paid it even if it be late. The bank is charging her for unpaid direct debits, unauthorised overdraft, a resverve fee and interest, she has been into the bank so many times pleading with them to help her and they refuse, saying there is nothing they can do apart from close her account or cancel the overdraft and she is then in a constant fight to get out of it.
She is so worried and has been to the doctor because it is causing her severe depression which she is actually being prescribed anti-depressants. I can see that she has no more energy to fight with the bank or to find new work and im very concerned by the fact that she tells me that it seems they are taking the charges and changing the days of when they take the direct debits to a day when she has no money and payments and ATM charges are processed 3/4 days later than they should be and she is paying for all these returned direct debits and :mad:crazy £22 every so many days and i just can't believe it and don't know what she can do.

Infact I was there when barclays told her, that, "if, you can't pay the money or have no job then go to the citizens advice and they can stop te charges, but it will mess up your credit score", which seemed to me like they were trying to scare her.

Can anyone suggest anything? please, from a friedn of a sweet portuguee girl who doesn't deserve to be treated this way.

Thank you thank you

natweststaffmember

Firstly cancel the personal reserve from the account. secondly, I would get her to get a copy of her regular payments and to cancel ALL non essential Direct Debits, if she has a contract phone and the contract is up, cancel it and get a pay and go phone.
Furthermore get her to send a Subject Access request for the list of all charges applied by barclays including the £22 reserve fees, the £8 fees and any other charges she has got.
And tell her, she isn;t the only one that this is happening to.

deb13

This is happening to me too. And instead of taking the charges out individually, they take them in a lump sum every 4 weeks. So, as soon as I pay some overdraft off, these charges, which can mount up to £100 +, come out and I'm back to square one again and struggle to pay rent, bills etc. Is it possible to claim these back or not? And what if you have already had a successful claim once before on the same account? Barclays have changed the way they deal with overdraft charges with the reserve amount instead of charges on each transaction, would this affect it?

Help