Barclays staff transferring money between my accounts without permission

2sides2everystory

I am not surprised at any of this story. If any bank oik did that to me then never mind Customer Relations; their board of directors would know about it PDQ.

enigma368

If any bank oik did that to me then never mind Customer Relations; their board of directors would know about it PDQ.

I have evaluated my opinion on this, this morning and have decided that the response to this complaint is not good enough.

I have contacted them to re-open the complaint and have requested a written response explaining:

1- Why this happened.

2- What Barclays have done to address this incident.

3- What Barclays are doing to make sure this doesnt happen again.

Once I have this information I will pursue more than a simple apology considering that:

1- What happened was not merely a minor inconvenience. The incident caused me to lose trust in Barclays with my money, to the extent that I had to close my savings account as I could not be confident that Barclays would not transfer my money between accounts again in the future without authorisation or indeed permission.

2- What happened could have caused a direct debit payment to fail, had I not noticed it in time. This would have caused financial penalties, wasted a lot of my time and could have even affected my credit rating.

3- What happened was completely unethical and quite possibly illegal.

4- What happened has caused me not only stress and anger due to something that should not have happened, but also
now has taken up a considerable amount of my time and money in writing letters and making phonecalls. 3-4 hours is not a lot of time but when it is time that I am wasting because of something that shouldn't have happened, it is wrong.

I believe that this should be treated a lot more seriously than it is and I will pursue this matter vigorously. I will also be demanding appropriate compensation given the facts above.

Anyone feel any of the above is wrong or unreasonable?

p.s. I am quite angry to learn today when phoning them that all that had been done was an email had been sent to the manager of the staff member involved!! They were obviously hoping to brush this under the carpet but Im not going to allow that.

System

It is possible that the email to the manager will start a disciplinary process against the member of staff and if the outcome is deemed serious enough, they may be dismissed.

If they are guilty of deliberate fraud, then I suppose dismissal would be appropriate, but what if they made a mistake like for example they saw that the savings account had a zero balance so wrongly assumed that the original payment had not gone through so they arranged the transfer to correct what they assumed to have happened. It may not be procedurally allowed, but they may have been trying to be helpful, albeit mistakenly.

Hopefully, the manager's investigation will get to the truth and the punishment will be appropriate.

Irrespective of the outcome of the internal investigation, I think you are entitled to be compensated for the bank's error and the hassle you have been faced with.

JimmyTheWig

The only thing I would change in your email would be scrapping any mention of compensation.
I would always ask for a goodwill gesture in cases like this. Compensation normally has to be for proven losses (e.g. actual cost of phone calls, for which they will want to see proof) whereas goodwill can be given more freely.

Oh, and point 4 "due to something that should have happened" is missing the word "not"!

enigma368

Someone else called me today to go through it. He said he would call the branch to find out what had happened and would get back to me.

chambta

Surely a piddly £20 doesn't get a Barclays branch a 'sale'?

Either way someone got sacked very recently from my employer for doing similar.

2sides2everystory

chambta wrote: »

Surely a piddly £20 doesn't get a Barclays branch a 'sale'?

Yes it probably does, either directly or indirectly. It varies with the vagaries dreamed up from time to time by those with authority to vary it (not the branch) and I am sure has been even more piddly than a £20 deposit in the past.

Either way someone got sacked very recently from my employer for doing similar.

The people who should get sacked are the so-called assistant managers, branch managers, area managers, performance managers and regional managers, UK managers, board directors and the Chairman who either actively encourage it through blind ignorance, or through negligence in deciding what may pass for acceptable business practice, maybe even surreptitiously and passively encourage such practices by being seen paying lipservice only to doing anything about changing such a ridiculous culture.

chambta

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Yes it probably does, either directly or indirectly. It varies with the vagaries dreamed up from time to time by those with authority to vary it (not the branch) and I am sure has been even more piddly than a £20 deposit in the past.

The people who should get sacked are the so-called assistant managers, branch managers, area managers, performance managers and regional managers, UK managers, board directors and the Chairman who either actively encourage it through blind ignorance, or through negligence in deciding what may pass for acceptable business practice, maybe even surreptitiously and passively encourage such practices by being seen paying lipservice only to doing anything about changing such a ridiculous culture.

So often reward is earnt/paid for things that cannot possibly earn value for the bank. The culture is very much 'short term', today, this week etc and as you rightly say this comes from right at the very top.

enigma368

enigma368

(SEE PREVIOUS POST FOR RESPONSE LETTER)

So, they have replied upholding my complaint. Still no explanation as to what happened. Saying internal action will be taken, and while I can understand why they can't tell me what they are doing or have done, it could mean that they are simply fobbing me off and are not actually going to do anything.

Should I take the £50 or pursue further?

p.s. Their line of "you transferred £20 from savings to cash card which you then noticed was transferred back" is a very generous way of describing what actually happened - as if the same £20 went back by mistake. It omits the fact that there were 5 weeks between the two transfers and for much of the time in between, the cashcard account had held a zero balance as I had withdrawn all the money. Not like it was this one £20 being transferred back and forth.