Barclays - It beggers belief - what a bunch of wally bankers.

John_Pierpoint

If you put a modest amount of your savings with Barclays; let us say 50,000 pounds, make sure you keep immaculate records and don't arrange to die before you have reclaimed your deposit.

I write as the executor of an elderly relative, who had a number of savings accounts with several financial organisations, a couple of dozen in all.
By last summer I had gained probate and liquidated all but one of these investments complete with details of interest and tax paid. I am ready make a final income tax return for the 15 months since the death and then settle up with the dozen beneficiaries mentioned in the will; providing them with a certificate of income and tax deducted, so they can report their new source of income.

Unfortunately the one investment with Barclays is proving to be a nightmare. I have been passed from pillar to post, from India to Liverpool via half a dozen other Barclays offices.
I finally managed to extract a hand written cheque from Warwick for a sum, that supposedly is the final balance on the account.
That was in November and it came with a letter promising details of the amount within 10 days.
Following two chasing letters, I have managed today to get a reply from the so called customer services department in Leicester. I already have several letters from Leicester that contradict each other, so I have very little faith in the intelligence, experience knowledge and training of any of the Leicester staff.
The 6 pages of the reply is completely useless and contains a repeated phrase "we are unable to provide you with a certificate for the period 6th April 20nn"
Sorry Barclays that is meaningless, a period can only be defined by its start and end date.
HMRC may like a certificate, all I need is an account print out showing, somewhere, interest added and tax deducted for the 14 months that Barclays managed to hang onto the capital after the death.

As there are 2,000 deaths a day in Britain, I would expect Barclays would have a well oiled procedure to handle the situation.

In my life time I have had a fair amount of experience in managing organisations from the bottom up BUT in the case of Barclays hydra headed organisation and faceless employees who sign with a squiggle, I don't know where to begin.

Is there any one with experience as a Barclays customer or as a current or former employee, who can tell me how the organisation is meant to function together with some ideas on how to get its staff to take responsibility for their work ?

John

If you need any more information about the joys of being an executor, go to "search" on the whole forum tool bar above, click "advanced" and put "Dog" in the key word and "John_Pierpoint" in the "find postings" field.

Primrose

As a Barclays customer, I had to act both as Power of Attorney, and later as Executors for my parents who were also both lifelong Barclays customers. The service I got was very mixed, depending on what I was trying to do at the time, and this was long before the days of Indian Call Centres, with their abysmal understanding and lack of authority to do anything which resembles common-sense activity.

Banks simply don't realise how stressful it is for customers who have to deal with all these procedures following a bereavement, and their staff are generally very poorly trained. I remember that one particular financial savings provider even wrote to my deceased father directly after I had sent them a death certificate, asking him to fill in a particular form, sign it and return it.

I was so angry. I wrote to the Chief Executive, asked him how he expected my father to sign the bl**dy form when he could now be found in ashes c/o xxxxx Crematorium.

I received a very apolgetic reply saying that staff training procedures would be reviewed to ensure that such a remiss procedure never happened again. But sadly, these kinds of incompetent and inconsiderate errors happen all the time.

Unfortunately when all these activities are centralised, everything is deal with by anonymous individuals. If only we could go back to day where everything was dealt with by your local bank manager who actually knew who you were and everything could be done within the branch!

John_Pierpoint

The share registrar keeps the "expensive" death certificate and writes to the deceased as a matter of course, just in case the executor is a fraudster.

norse-storyteller

I see why you asked if Odin's troubles were with Barclay's. Maybe if a few head honcho's lost their 'pat on the back' bonuses because of such foxtrot ups things would change. Sadly I can't see that happening.

In my dreams I picture an american ambulance chaser doing some good and launching a successful "the buck stops here" action for something like this, the precidient of which filters out into the rest of the world. Well I can dream.

uih039

John

I also dealt with Barclay's in 2008 as Executor of an estate and initially had great difficulty dealing with their various offices. However, I did eventually discover that they have a specialist team who deal with estate matters. Once I dealt with them, I had no further problems; they understood what was needed and co-ordinated all requirements. I dealt direct with an individual on the team (or an equally competent colleague in her absence). It may be too late for you, but the details are as follows:

Barclays Bank
Deceased Case Management
1250 High Road
Whetstone
London
N20 0PB.

Phone 020 8273 4488.

Andrew.

John_Pierpoint

STOP PRESS - The deceased case management unit has moved to Warwick.
The old 'phone number still works. The new phone number is 0844 633 0888 (Is that a premium number?)
Yesterday morning I wrote to Warwick to let them know that buck passing my case, unsupervised back to Leicester, was not good enough and giving them a week to get their act together.
I am up against an Income Tax deadline of 31st January theoretically - unfortunately the tax papers are at East Kilbride - the tax office with the largest backlog in the country?!?:wall:

What a shambles.

I'll let you know if Barclays can ever manage to get their act together.

John

PS I've actually had a conversation with someone prepared to give me their full name:
Initials JO :wave:

LeeSouthEast

The Warwick DDI is 01926 517802.

0844 is "up to" 5p/min. Depends on the number, as I understand it.

opinions4u

I'll let you know if Barclays can ever manage to get their act together.

They did, eventually, for me.

Lost paperwork, failure to deal with complaints within agreed timescales etc.

I eventually forwarded details on to their executive complaints team. It took 3 weeks to do what had failed to be done within the previous 5 months.

Personally, I thought 3 weeks was on the long side to check some paperwork and draw a cheque.

It was a poor show from a firm I expected better from, especially with a sensitive issue such as a bereavement.

John_Pierpoint

I've got the cheque, that took not the 10 days offered but five weeks.
Problem is that 10 weeks later I still don't know how it was made up so I can divide it into capital and income and how much tax has been paid on the income bit..

John_Pierpoint

Well here we are again, nearly 2 months later.
I gave up on the bereavement department in Warwick and got next day service from the complaints department in London(?) [After a row with an idiot/moron/imbecile (delete as appropriate) in Liverpool, who told me I was not allowed to make an official complaint, having been transferred to him by our friends in India (again)] .
The phone number 0805 6090806 seems to get you through to intelligent life.
I have been sent a statement at last showing the amount earned in monthly income since the death and a statement of the income for the income in the 6 tax year months prior to death.
We have a slight muddle over about 450 GBP representing a month's income. This was paid by a cheque dated the day of the death.
So I have reported this as the property of the deceased (as required by the IHT legislation for accrued income) BUT as far as Barclays is concerned it is the income of the estate post death.
However Barclays had "lost" a month's interest this time last year, which should have been accumulated into the account.
After a lot of badgering I got a hand written cheque for another 400 odd GBP, but with no explanation of how it was calculated, though details were promised.
I also queried why the account failed to earn any interest during the 3 weeks following its last monthly pay out and its date of closure - not a fortune in this day and age of pitiful interest rates but enough for a nice evening out for two.

I think I will make one final attempt to get an account of what was paid out when and if that fails put the file in the hands of the ombudsman (and wait another 6 months).

John.

Out of interest the ombudsman's statistics show that Barclays gets the worst level of complaints of the large banks and financial institutions and the highest level found in favour of the complainant. You have to get down amongst the dodgy/spivvy/american origin/sub prime based financial firms to be sure to find higher levels of justified complaint.

Super09

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Well here we are again, nearly 2 months later.
I gave up on the bereavement department in Warwick and got next day service from the complaints department in London(?) [After a row with an idiot/moron/imbecile (delete as appropriate) in Liverpool, who told me I was not allowed to make an official complaint, having been transferred to him by our friends in India (again)] .
The phone number 0805 6090806 seems to get you through to intelligent life.
I have been sent a statement at last showing the amount earned in monthly income since the death and a statement of the income for the income in the 6 tax year months prior to death.
We have a slight muddle over about 450 GBP representing a month's income. This was paid by a cheque dated the day of the death.
So I have reported this as the property of the deceased (as required by the IHT legislation for accrued income) BUT as far as Barclays is concerned it is the income of the estate post death.
However Barclays had "lost" a month's interest this time last year, which should have been accumulated into the account.
After a lot of badgering I got a hand written cheque for another 400 odd GBP, but with no explanation of how it was calculated, though details were promised.
I also queried why the account failed to earn any interest during the 3 weeks following its last monthly pay out and its date of closure - not a fortune in this day and age of pitiful interest rates but enough for a nice evening out for two.

I think I will make one final attempt to get an account of what was paid out when and if that fails put the file in the hands of the ombudsman (and wait another 6 months).

John.

Out of interest the ombudsman's statistics show that Barclays gets the worst level of complaints of the large banks and financial institutions and the highest level found in favour of the complainant. You have to get down amongst the dodgy/spivvy/american origin/sub prime based financial firms to be sure to find higher levels of justified complaint.

Just an FYI.....

Barclays outsource all of the deceased services work to a company called ITC who are based in Warwick, it was formerly Whetstone in Cardiff. There are some blogs on here about the awful service ITC off. Im an ex-employee of ITC working on the Barclays contract and had quite an experience working there! Unfortunately incidents that you have described are completely the norm im afraid