Barclays Tax Beater Cash ISA - experiences so far (merged)

ctdctd

Opened in branch on April 7th.
Cheque cashed today - May 8th.
No paperwork yet.

harryhound

tkane wrote: »

Hi, this is slightly off topic but this seems like the right thread for my query instead of having to start a new thread. Basically, I was just wondering whether it would be worth holding out for a month or two and wait to open an ISA for better rates since the MPC are almost certainly going to rise rates next week? Are banks likely to reacr quickly to the MPC's decision or is it not worth the wait? Thanks.

Hi tkane,

You are definitely on the wrong thread. This is the wait-a-month anyway thread.

What you have identified is the concept of "opportunity cost". Once you make a decision, you have lost the opportunity to make it again.

I would like to see rates go up by 1/2%. So let's do the maths. Leaving out the complexities of compound interest, let us say you are currently getting 3% NET on your savings. Let us say you wait a month. At the end of the month you can get an extra 1/2%. Let us say you are investing the full 3K.
Now 3% net is 90 a year or 7.50 a month. 6% is 180 a year. So sitting on your hands is costing you 7.50 a month=90 per year.
1/2% is 15 a year or 1.25 a month. So doing nothing for a month means loosing 7.50 against the possibility of gaining year at the rate of 1.25 a month So it would take you 6 months to catch up. It would be the end of month 7 from now before you got ahead.
However back to the opportunity cost, can you afford to leave your money invested for 12/13 months? Money now has to be more valuable than money you will receive on the day after your funeral.
We could make this discussion really complicated by including compound interest, discounted cash flow, and the-rule-of-72 to get a feel of retail inflation, currently 4.8%. (Martin explains the rule-of-72 on the main site).

Frankly for the sums of money involved and the probability that the Bank of England will funk and fudge the big decision, I would get invested now and avoid the opportunity cost of deciding to wait 13 months before you make the decision again.

If we were discussing a similar decision with two more zero's on the numbers, then the decision would matter (BUT if you had those sort of savings you would be facing 40% tax probably, so there would be a whole lot more complexities to worry about.)

Harry.

By the way there is a thread somewhere where a MSE hero has created a spread sheet of ISA options. I noticed that it has been nominated on this months nominate-the-post-of-the-month thread, so you could probably link to it there.

legal33

For anyone in the same situation: I went into my Barclays branch on March 29 to open an Isa for 2006/7. Nice lady said that even though Isa will be opened AFTER April 5th 2007 i.e. in 2007/8 tax year), Barclays will backdate it to 2006/7. So I handed over my cheque. No receipt was given.

In mid-April then was sent a letter that confirmed my ISA was opened on April 5th. No mention was made of the sum of money I had deposited. Problem was that letter said 'you cannot subscribe to another Mini Cash or Maxi ISA during this tax year'....

...Which left the question: Which tax year does this statement refer to? the date ISA was opened according to the letter April 5th) or the date of letter?

Made a call to helpdesk but no joy. I was given conflicting information including being told that the ISA was actualy opened on April 7th...

I have now received a statement with a full description of my transactions. HOWEVER, now the statement says that the account was opened on...April10th!

So we have two documents with different opening dates: 1. April 5th; 2. April 10th. So I called CS and very nice chap said that the money was transferred on April 10th but 'everything will be backdated to 2006/7'. Also, they have a concession with the Inland Revenue which, because of the volume of applications, anyone who wishes to open an ISA for 2007/8 will not be prevented from doing so.

Fingers crossed!

blinko

can you transfer this ISA out at the end of the year ? eg when there rate goes down

Kazza242

blinko wrote: »

can you transfer this ISA out at the end of the year ? eg when there rate goes down

Yes, you can, as the Barclays ISA does not have any transfer out penalties or charges.

Sam_84

My experience is sadly similar to many of you posting in this thread ...

I took my application into Histon, Cambridge branch on 12 April and was told it would take 10 working days. Before starting out, I had read some of the messages here and did get the lady I spoke to in the branch to give me a receipt for the application. Thanks very much for the advice to do that.

They haven't cashed my cheque yet (8 May!) so I tried to get through to the savings line (0845 603 0845) and got that delightful message that says something like "we're so busy - we can't take your call - please call again later".

So I found the complaints phone number 0800 282 390 on the Barclays website (I see it's been posted here already - should have looked here first!), phoned and actually spoke to someone - shock! Very friendly lady but, as most people unfortunate to be on the front line dealing with customers, utterly powerless to do anything. At least she noted the complaint and so I'm in the system somewhere.

The things that really annoy me about this experience are that it's not as if Barclays couldn't have foreseen that there would be a lot of demand for this product and, whilst I accept that you're not going to risk having loads of expensive resources (mainly real people) sitting around "just in case there may be a lot of demand" but why not be honest with the potential customers and give them reassurance. It's not rocket science for someone who thinks about things from the perspective of the customer.

If they'd said something like "it's going to take up to 6 or whatever weeks to open your account but don't worry, here's a receipt for your deposit and your application and we'll backdate the interest to today" then that would have covered off a lot of the problems that I have been reading about in this thread today. Just giving people a proper receipt would have alleviated a lot of people's concerns. And then they should have an 0800 number to call for people to follow-up after the 6 or however many weeks.

And it's well known that getting new customers is expensive and it's only when you keep them that you really start to get the opportunity to earn profit from them. People who've had bad experiences with organisations do tell other people what happened. From reading this thread, I think that there are a lot of people out there who will be telling their friends, work colleagues, etc. not to bother with Barclays. It must be costing Barclays a fortune to handle the complaints too.

By the way, weren't Barclays the bank that hired that American lady from a US bank to come and sort out their customer service? Oops. (Will look her details up in a minute.) Perhaps Martin has enough clout to get her or someone to give MSE an interview?

Incidentally, I would urge people to ring the complaints line (or to write to them - freepost address at bottom of message). That way it gets recorded in Barclays' complaints statistics and, typically, the FSA (Financial Services Authority, regulator for UK banks amongst other things) requires regulated firms to monitor and report to them the volume of complaints monthly.

Anyway, rant over. Thanks for reading. I see that some people are getting the accounts opened but the backdating of interest isn't quite sorted out. We shall see what happens.

Bye for now.

Sam

Contact details for Barclays Customer Relations (aka Complaints) team:

Customer Relations
Barclays Bank PLC
1 Churchill Place
FREEPOST RTLA-CSUE-TCHC
London
E14 5HP

Phone: 0800 282 390

tightasagnats

Thanks to you all for these helpful posts - I'm trying to get through now as my application seems to be sitting in a pile somewhere!

gman75

I applied to open a Barclays Tax Beater Cash ISA in person at my local branch on 21st March. I was told at the time it would take 10 working days to open.

I happened to look on here mid April and saw there was a backlog so thought I'd give them a bit longer. I checked my bank balance early May to find that my cheque for £3000 had gone out of my account on the 26th April.

I called in to my local branch today to be told not to worry it'd be sorted by the end of May! I said I'd rather they checked for me as the money had already been taken out of my account and that I wasn't happy not knowing what was going on.

The lady in the branch looked it up for me and found out that my account was opened on the 20th April and that I've now got £13 interest - not sure if that means it's backdated properly?

Anyway I've got my sort code and account number and if I'm lucky I might get some paperwork through this month. I was considering opening a barclays current account - for some reason I don't think I'll bother now

Woodyrocks

Wonders will never cease. Finally got something in the post from Barclays. I am on the system and have an account number finally. Just need to find out if all £6000 is sitting in there and if they are going to keep their 'promise' of backdating all interest lost by their faffing about.

I love that word 'faffing'

Woodyrocks

It says it was opened on the 5th of April, can some please confirm that they haven't fuc** up as it is meant to be for 2006/2007 opening. And also can someone provide the 0800 number for the ISA enquiries. Mucho Gracias