Barclays Account - they claim I didnt paid cash in

lewunia

Hi there,

I had a Current Bank Account with Barclays. I was not using it (apart from overdraft facility) and paying £12.50, so back in May 2010 I decided to close the account.

I went to my branch paid outstanding £253.00 of overdraft and closed the account at the counter.

Back in December 2010 I received a letter from Collection Agency asking to pay off outstanding £253.00.

I have contacted Barclays with complaint. But it seems that they can not see the payment on my account nor in sundry account in my branch. So basically if I cant provide the payment slip confirming payment I will have to pay it off again. I of course got rid of 'paid in' slip somehow. :O

I now feel like someone took my money away from my pocket and dont want to leave it as it is.

Any idea of what could I do? Can I report that anywhere? Can I ask bank to provide CCTV records for that day?

Dont know what to do...

CLAPTON

how did you pay?

Loughton_Monkey

Just about everyone I know would have kept the paying in slip (and receipt for closure of the account) and treated it like gold dust in those circumstances.

What proportion of bank transactions 'go missing' due to an error on their part? Say 0.001%
What proportion of people 'lose' their receipt? Say 1%

So what are the chances of both happening together? Extremely slim, which is why you will not be believed. Especially as they probably get 1,000 or so similar 'claims' a day. I am not in any way saying you, personally, are lying, but simply setting out what they will see as extremely low probabilites.

coolesticeking

Maybe you will have to see if they still have the CCTV footage of you paying the money in...

Don't know how long they hold this for though.

MME_2

I seriously doubt CCTV could be used to prove anything. Even if you can see money being paid in on the CCTV, it could be being paid into anything. A bill, someone elses account etc. They will not release CCTV to the public, only the police.

You say a collection agency (acting on behalf of the bank) has written to you so I assume your account was already with Barclays collections/debt recovery internal department when you closed the account in December?

DizzleUK

MME wrote: »

You say a collection agency (acting on behalf of the bank) has written to you so I assume your account was already with Barclays collections/debt recovery internal department when you closed the account in December?

I agree. Something is missing from the OP's story. If the account was closed in May 2010 and the letter asking for the "missing" payment was received in December 2010 from a 3rd Party DCA, then something else must have happened in the 7 months in between.

I don't believe that the December letter would be the first contact regarding this money.

If the money was outstanding, then the account would not have been closed and thus further interest and/or charges (this £12.50 a month the OP mentions?) would have been applied to the balance in the interim. Barclays would have written to the OP before passing the debt on.

There would be a default on the OP's credit files also (OP should check this out).

I'm not accusing the OP of lying or suchlike. I'm merely stating that there is an important piece of information missing from the story. Without that, we cannot help.

Questions for the OP:

1. Was the account active when you paid the balance, or was it already with a debt collection agency and you were making repayments of £12.50 a month to settle the debt?

2. If the account was active when you paid, did you receive a letter confirming the account was closed? If not, did it not concern you that you should have received one?

3. What other communication from Barclays did you receive between May 2010 and December 2010 regarding this account? For example, monthly statements. Letters asking for the £12.50 payments. If they didn't receive the £253, then surely they would continue charging you the £12.50 each month?

4. No phonecalls from their collections department at all? (unless you moved house/changed numbers without informing them at any point.)

MME_2

MME wrote: »

<snip>so I assume your account was already with Barclays collections/debt recovery internal department when you closed the account in December?

Apologies, that should read May not December.

The only reason I ask is because I saw this several times at LTSB when I used to work in branch and accounts were passed to Debt Recovery. What used to happen is that although the account is technically closed because they are collecting a debt and nothing else, they still used to accept deposits as normal for some reason. What should happen is that to pay it back, you receive a credit book/reference number to pay into a head office collection account that then allocates your payment based on your debt reference number.

Numerous times we would accept deposits (because the system allowed it and didn't tell us the account was with recovery) only to have the credit returned to us the next day because the account is 'closed'. We obviously then get back in touch with the customer to advise them how they should be paying and for their reference number to re-credit this money. Of course this didn't always happen because of some lazy bones staff so the money would sit in an unapplied credits account for a bit until the customer queried where their money was.

This is all assuming that you are/were with recovery of course and worth investigating if you are as sure of this deposit as you say you are.