Alert! Helpful person in Barclays call centre today!

debtdesperado · 10 February 2010 at 11:51AM

:TAmazed... I have one of those accounts which you have to pay a monthly fee for. On the account I also have a massive OD (£2.5k), which is free... I think the free element of it is a mistake from when I was student, and no one has ever questioned it (least of all me!). The OD is part of my debt total, so will get paid off eventually, but obviously, as it's free will be the last thing to be repaid.

The charge for the account recently went up to £7 a month...which is a bit steep for 'benefits' I don't use. I had spoken to someone before about getting the account downgraded to a free one, and they noticed the free OD, and said that to get the charge taken off I needed to go into a branch where they would also look at the OD. I don't have the money to reduce the OD at the moment, so a bit of a bind...

I call today for something else, and mentioned it, and the helpful woman downgraded it to a free account on the phone, and then suggested that she also change my savings account (I only keep dribs and drabs of cash in there) to a higher interest rate one and shut the old one... amazed.

One call, at least £84 saved a year... hurrah!

GeorgeUK · 10 February 2010 at 12:25PM

Well done. Does the free account still have a free overdraft facility though?

I'd write in to request a detailed explanation of the account if you don't get anything through the post.

debtdesperado · 10 February 2010 at 1:16PM

Yep - no change to the OD! I don't want to stir things up though until I'm in a position to be able to pay off/reduce the OD amount... which is not now :-)