Barclaycard account Closed?

PandK

This is my first post on this site, and I'm hoping you may be able to offer some advice or hope.
My wife paid off and closed her Barclaycard account in January of 2007. Last Tuesday she received a letter from a debt collection agency telling her that she owed £156 and that they were sending an agent over to collect the money!
Naturally we were extremely confused and upset by this allegation, as we have always been scrupulous in repaying debts. On investigation it appears that Barclaycard authorised a payment to CPP (their card protection scheme) for £70 18 months after the account had been closed, July 2008.
Unfortunately, we moved home in August 2007 and Barclaycard claim to have sent statements to our notified previous address from July 2008 onwards! We never saw any of those statements, as none had been forwarded to our new address.
Our initial reaction was disbelief that such a thing could occur, but according to an article from the BBC website 22 November, 2003, this is common practice!
I immediately telephoned the debt collection agency and have had a 3 week extension applied to our account to allow us some breathing room. I also phoned CPP and taken advice from their staff. I have followed up the phone calls with letters explaining the situation to each party, Apex, CPP and Barclaycard and asking them to help in resolving the matter.
As far as we are concerned my wife closed the account with Barclaycard and CPP individually in January 2007, and are at a loss to understand why they should demand a payment 18 months later. Especially as they were asking for a payment for insurance on an account with zero balance and had been closed!
Has this sort of thing happened to anyone else on these forums before? Do we have a chance of Barclaycard withdrawing this debt and CPP refunding the money? What are the chances of having a years worth of late payments and defaults recorded against my wife affecting our credit rating, and will we be able to get that cleaned up completely?
Thank you in anticipation of your help.

2234

Hey, I used to work for CPP, and have often posted on here about my disdain for that comapny, and hope I can offer a few words of advice.

Ok, first of all, you will always need to contact CPP directly if you move, as they are a separate company to the bank. The CPP insurance you have covers all your cards, not just the one the premium comes from. For some reason, they have the ability, as you have a standing order with them, to take the money from a closed account, they say this is to ensure there is 'no break in cover' for any of your cards.

CPP, I can guarantee, will not refund the money. About 80% of callers have a similar issue to yourselves, and the way they make money out of people such as yourself is by stating that as you didn't read the small print and didn't inform them of your change of address, they couldn't send you a letter saying your account was about to renew, and therefore took the money, as had you received this letter you could have cancelled or changed the payment card.

You say you closed the account individually with CPP 18 months ago, if by this you mean you rang CPP as well as your bank, to cancel the policy and card respectively, then that is a different case. If you called 18 months ago, and were told your policy was set to cancel on expiry when it wasn't, then they will refund you the money. They record every call, and also have a call log any agent on the phone can access and see when you called. If this is the case, write to them at the refunds address (pm me if you want it without ringing them - I memorised it the amount of times I had to give it out!) stating you cancelled the policy but the premium has been taken, and detailing any charges you incurred because of this.

Also, I think it would be worth ringing CPP again, I can give you their local number so it is free, instead of calling the 0845 number, and checking your policy is cancelled, so this doesn't happen again. Agents are targetted on the amount of cancellation calls they get, and a very common thing is for them to not actually cancel the policy, even though they say they have to the customer (which may be what happened to you before) and leave it for another agent to deal with in a year, or 3 years time. Ring up, simply stating you wish to check your policy is set to cancel on expiry, and if they try and turn you around, simply say you want to check it is set to cancel on expiry, and nothing else.

PandK

2234 wrote: »

You say you closed the account individually with CPP 18 months ago, if by this you mean you rang CPP as well as your bank, to cancel the policy and card respectively, then that is a different case. If you called 18 months ago, and were told your policy was set to cancel on expiry when it wasn't, then they will refund you the money. They record every call, and also have a call log any agent on the phone can access and see when you called. If this is the case, write to them at the refunds address (pm me if you want it without ringing them - I memorised it the amount of times I had to give it out!) stating you cancelled the policy but the premium has been taken, and detailing any charges you incurred because of this.

This is indeed the case, as the agent I spoke to on Saturday saw that the account had been closed in January 07, but was at a loss to explain why the premium had subsequently been taken 18 months later. She gave me the address for the Refunds office, and I have written them a letter detailing what has happened and asking for a refund to Barclaycard immediately.
Thank you for your insight and help.

2234

No problem, I have to admit I have no idea why it has been taken either, what it could be is you have duplicate policies, registered under two addresses so the system doesn't detect it, and one was cancelled, but the premium was taken from another policy. If the refunds department is no help, I would query this and see if it is the case. But hopefully it should be resolved fairly easily for you

PandK

A quick update that has seen this matter resolved.
We received a letter a fortnight ago from a gentleman from CPP who replied that our application for a refund had been declined.
Reading the letter carefully I realised that there had been a couple of errors, namely that he had checked and could find no record of us closing our account in 2008 (we had informed him so in our letter that we had closed it in January 2007). Also, the account number was different to the one we had.
He also, rather cheekily I feel, re-stated that CPP was only a partner of Barclaycard, and not a part of Barclaycard, and we were responsible for ensuring that we passed any change of address and cancellation information onto them as well. This is all true of course. However, the fact that the letter was on Barclaycard headed paper was a bit tasteless.

I wrote another letter back, pointing out the errors and, this morning, received a letter from their Customer Relations Executive. I quote from her letter;

Thank you for your letter concerning the renewel of your policy. I am sorry to learn of your dissatisfaction with the service you received.

After reviewing your letter I am pleased to confirm that as a gesture of goodwill, the renewal premium of£70.00 will be refunded to your Barclaycard within the next 10 working days and the policy has now been cancelled. Furthermore I have spoken to Barclaycard and they have confirmed that all the charges which relate to this matter have been removed from your account...

It then went on to restate their Terms and Conditions as relates to updates, renewals and cancellations. I think the sticky wicket for them would have been the "automatic renewal if we hear nothing from you" part of their policy.
Anyway, I think that qualifies as a result. I'm happy to accept a "Goodwill gesture" if it means this is resolved. I have to admit that I wasn't particularlly looking forward to going to the Financial Ombudsman, but that would have been my next port of call.

Once again, Thank you to those who responded. :money:

ALIBOBSY

Still double check with Barclaycard that the whole thing is closed (account cleared)and that they have notified the debt collector. They probably have but I would double check to ensure this doesn't pop up again in a few years.
Also worth £2 to ensure no markers have gone onto her credit file which could effect her future credit rating.

ali x