Can Barclays get away with this?

bjornmarian

I opened a regular savings account in February with the first direct debit to start on the 1st of March.
Last week I received a letter saying that we paid a bill of 133 pounds on the 20th of March out of this account and consequently lost the 10%(terms and conditions blabla). On that day we paid 3 bills. Barclays claims that we told the woman behind the counter to pay 2 bills out of our current and 1 out of this savings account. Why would we do this when there was still more than enough in the current account? The personal banker agreed that this was indeed very strange but there was nothing that he could do.
I complained online but haven't heard a lot from them.

I'm just wondering if I'm the only one who they did this to. Is there some group I could complain to?

Regards,

Bjorn

miaxmia

I'd make an appointment to see the Bank Manager - presumably there were enough funds in the other account to cover the third bill at the time. I'm sure there probably is something the personal banker could do - correct their error for starters. My son has twice before received charges from Halifax because they said a direct debit hadn't gone through, leading my son to pay the direct debit again (then finding that they had paid twice) and each time Halifax have refunded the charge.

grumbler

If no success with your branch, complain higher: How to complain. Calculate and claim the interest lost in case you close your RS account and start a new one.

However, I cannot believe that somebody with internet access still pays bills over a counter ...

BTW, online you can neither pay bills from the RS account nor even transfer money to the current account. This means that the transaction in question was not a regular one and the operator should have warned your and doble-checked with you before doing this.