Barclaycard Online Payment Con

johnniefp

When you pay online the system default is to pay off the minimum amount, I expected that. But I never expected the other options.

Lets say your July statement was £1000.
When you click through to pay the options are:

1: Minumum amount B]with £minimum displayed[/B
2: Current balance in full B]with £1500 displayed[/B
3: Other (enter amount) [free text box]

Why is option two £1500?
Because it calculates the whole of July and everything upto this point in August, they're after a whole two weeks (depending when you pay) of my money without an interest free 30 day period.

There should (but isn't) in my opinion be four options
1: Minumum amount (£x)
2: Last statement in full (£1000)
3: Current balance in full (£1500)
4: Other (enter amount)

Deliberate? you guess.

john

Astaroth

Given you have a free text area to enter what ever amount you want it doesnt really sound like a problem to me.

Deliberate? may be - having had the misfortune of having first hand experience of IT departments in the banking world it could also be a coding error which they have simply decided to live with because of the cost of changing it. I know for us, changing the wording of a single system generated letter for one brand costs £30,000 in IT (and that is only if there is no new system generated data to be included and it doesnt change the number of sides printed - if these are also changed you can add another 50% or more to the price)

CIM

johnniefp wrote: »

When you pay online the system default is to pay off the minimum amount, I expected that. But I never expected the other options.

Lets say your July statement was £1000.
When you click through to pay the options are:

1: Minumum amount B]with £minimum displayed[/B
2: Current balance in full B]with £1500 displayed[/B
3: Other (enter amount) [free text box]

Why is option two £1500?
Because it calculates the whole of July and everything upto this point in August, they're after a whole two weeks (depending when you pay) of my money without an interest free 30 day period.

There should (but isn't) in my opinion be four options
1: Minumum amount (£x)
2: Last statement in full (£1000)
3: Current balance in full (£1500)
4: Other (enter amount)

Deliberate? you guess.

I know this is an old thread but they are still doing it one year on and it annoys me every time I pay - smacks of a deliberate attempt by Barclaycard to get people to inadvertently pay more money sooner than they need to.

I expect it is deliberate. Its probably not illegal, but potentially misleading and certainly inconvenient to Barclaycard customers.

I bet a large proportion of people who pay their bills online and settle in full every month simply select the "Current Balance in full" option without realising that they are paying more than the previous statement's total.

Karl.H_2

I am confused. Are they taking more money than they should? Surely if you're paying off last months statement and a bit of the next months you're not losing money.

LittlePiskey

I noticed this the other day - probably just a sneaky way to get you to pay your full current balance before the end of the interest free period

CIM

Karl.H wrote: »

I am confused. Are they taking more money than they should? Surely if you're paying off last months statement and a bit of the next months you're not losing money.

If you pay them money earlier than you need to instead of earning interest on it yourself then yes of course you are losing money you could have otherwise had.