Newbie - Barclays, advice needed!

LittleMissJohnson

Hello

I have been speaking to my brother today who is having a bit of hassle from Barclays and I was hoping to get some advice.

He has an agreement with them to make minimal payments in respect of his overdraft facility and I believe he also has an agreement in respect of his Barclaycard.

I had a few debt problems myself back in 2003 which are pretty much sorted and advised him to open a separate bank account (based on my experiences) in case they decided to keep his monthly wages in full. He did this but Barclays have said they will not allow him to transfer his wages to an alternative account as they want to see what he is earning each month. If he does move them, they will cancel the agreements and request payment in full. He is also receiving an increasing no. of telephone calls each day, even though he has an agreement in place. (They are mostly automated messages but when he does speak to an advisor, they keep asking him to increase his payments).

He cannot increase the payments at present and has sent in a financial statement which was initially used to set up the agreements.

Is this sort of behavior the norm with banks these days? Are they allowed to threaten such behaviour - demanding that he keeps his wages in their account? I've been out of touch with this sort of thing for a while now and just wondered if anyone can offer advice/share similar experiences. I'm not sure what to tell him.

Thanks in advance

Tixy

Hi

I've not heard of a bank saying this before, there should be no reason he has to keep his wages there.

What is happening at the moment then? is it the overdraft account that he is still using for all his banking? and are they reducing the overdraft limit by the 'minimal payments' each month?

Do you/he know what has been recorded on his credit file so far? has it been shown as an arrangement to pay or as a default or no marker at all?

Even if he did move his wages away and they requested repayment in full as he obviously cannot afford it he would still have to make a similar offer to make small/token payments each month. They might want to see his financial statement again but I would think this is a safer option than risking them taking all his wages one month to recall the od - and that certainly is happening much more frequently now.

There is a letter he can send to stop all telephone contact which might be worthwhile to stop these annoying calls.

Are they currently charging interest on the OD? I suppose the one thing that could happen if it is frozen now is that they might refuse to freeze it if he moves his wages away but I think they will just look at it as a whole new case once he wasn't using that account anymore and not hold it against him so to speak.

LittleMissJohnson

Hi Tixy, thanks for the reply. I just tried calling him but he is driving home from work. Will let you know as soon as I speak to him this evening.

LittleMissJohnson

Ok ..update, just managed to get hold of him. He had an overdraft facility with Barclays and a Barclayloan. He couldn't afford the repayments on the loan and kept going into his overdraft reserve and being charged each month. Barclays cancelled both the loan and the overdraft and set up a consolidation loan where he pays back an amount each month. This is the facility where they will not allow him to switch to another bank so they can see what he earns each month.

He told me that he will leave money in the account for bills (his direct debits for bill payments come out of the Barclays account) so it's not like he is trying to avoid paying them.

From memory, when this happened to me, Barclays closed my account and the debt was sold to a collector. I still could only afford to pay the dc the minimum amount each month anyway!!

My Brother is terribly depressed over the whole thing so I'm trying to give him as much advice as possible.

Tixy

If its a loan then I would say move his current account elsewhere. Have his wages paid into a new account and move any non barclays DDs to the new account as well.

Then either transfer the money to cover the loan repayment each month into the barclays account or close the account and write to barclays to make a repayment offer he can afford and then set up a standing order from the new account to wherever barclays want it paid.