Barclays Bank - Useless. Advice needed.

shroty606

Hi Guys and Gals,
I must ask your advice one more time!
I recently tried to pay my council tax online to find after some investigation when the payment wouldn't go through, that the card had been declined and my account frozen by the bank, without contacting me!
After 10 I got through to a customer services advisor to be told someone had tried to book flights from Ireland to Lithuania! They had frozen my account and now had to cancel my card, that is absolutely fine I said, after being assured that the payment had been declined and no money was leaving my account.
My new card arrives, I check online banking, they money HAS left my account for the flights and I now have to fill in a form to claim it back. I told them I was not happy at all about this and I want the money returned immedialtey, which they can't do apparently. I put in a complaint and then asked if I would be hearing from them regarding it and the resposne I got was 'Well you won't really hear anything, you can have a letter of apology if you want'...If I want? It should be mandatory!!

I am looking for advice on how I should progress with this? It has left me short some £250 pounds which I will be needing soon and has left a rather bitter taste in my mouth the fact my complaint is falling on deaf ears, can I take it further?.

Also, am I being targeted by fraudsters because I have the premier (top) account?, as this has happened twice now. I am VERY careful with my details, shred my bills, only use reputable sites, which is worrying me as to how the details are being aquired.

Look forward to your help kind people!

wayne99

If you fill out the fraud forms they send you, and clearly mark the transaction as "FRAUD" as required to do so if it is indeed fraud, then barclays will return the money to your bank account as soon as possible.

You can write a letter of complaint in, but i doubt they will get back to you, i have wrote in on several occasions now about the same complaint, and have been ignored so i have now switched my banking to natwest after 7 - 8 years with sharkleys.

If you are carefull with your details then things like this will rarely happen, but thank your lucky stars that as you stated "that the card had been declined and my account frozen by the bank, without contacting me!" at least they did the right thing and didnt just leave the whole thing open so more then 250 squid had gone, how would you of felt if they just did nothing ? would you moan then ? of course.

I suggest that if you are really unhappy with barclays then just move banks, simple.

And bar there complaints procedure there is little you can do unless it goes past a surtain time frame i believe, then you can forward your complaint to the http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

but you would need to follow the barclays complaint procedure first, they will most prob phone you in the next 5 days as they have with me, but that was as far as it went my end.

and it doesnt matter if you had the best bank account in the world, gold silver, platinum, premier, etc etc there all open to fraud so sorry but because you have a premier account doesnt make it less possible to have a fraud committed.

shroty606

Thanks for the reply
Sorry I should have made myself clearer, I am really happy they froze my account however I wish they would have contacted me as soon as they did, seems like that should be normal procedure.
Also, I was wondering if certain account types are targeted more than others, do people assume because I have the top account I have more money and therefore premier accounts are targeted more than say basic ones?

wayne99

i dont think someone would know what type of account you had unless they got hold of your bank statements, or your card or someone within the bank sold the details or passed them on i would imagine that because premier accounts are mainly for the high earners ie, 50k + i guess they would possibly be seen as a more popular target as oposed to a basic account.

But i dont know if fraudsters could gain the info needed to find out, but you never know ... if they can clone cards and commit id fraud i sopose anything is possible...

If you continue to get fraud committed on your account i would suggest closing the account down and open a new one, or move banks.