Barclays Loyalty ISA - interest taxed this month?

pumpkin_soup

Hi,

I have a Barclays Loyalty ISA for the current tax year. The last two interest payments on my account are as follows:

01/10/2012 INTEREST £11.34
03/09/2012 INTEREST PAID GROSS £14.56

Looks like the latest interest payment has been taxed. (no withdrawals on this account).

I have contacted Barclays to get this rectified, but if you have a Loyalty ISA it might be worth checking your interest payment for this month to ensure that you have not been erroneously taxed on it.

Cheers,

Chris

londoner01

Don't worry it's not taxed - Mine still says "interest gross" despite having a lower amount.

The reason for this is probably that the September interest was paid quite late due to the weekend, plus August is a longer month than September. So effectively the £14.56 you see is already inflated because being paid over 33 days instead of 31 due to the weekend, and for a similar reason the £11.34 is lower because calculated over 28 days instead of 30.

miloSeymour

I noticed exactly the same this morning. The difference in interest seems to be more than a simple 2-3 days month length. I'm concerned that it might be linked to the new lower rate Loyalty ISA that has replaced the one we signed up for, which is about 0.4% lower.

pumpkin_soup did you get a response from Barclays explaining the issue?

londoner01

Mmm, good point.

Have had a look here http://www.barclays.co.uk/Savings/LoyaltyRewardISAInterestRates/P1242606179497 and there's nothing to suggest a change in interest rates should have happened. If you speak to them let us know!

galaxygrrl

I'm glad I read this thread - My interest was lower than expected too, and just put it down to the shorter month. However, I've now done a few quick calculations, and I'm pretty sure they've used the lower 2.61% rate, instead of the 3.01% rate.

d63

galaxygrrl wrote: »

I'm glad I read this thread - My interest was lower than expected too, and just put it down to the shorter month. However, I've now done a few quick calculations, and I'm pretty sure they've used the lower 2.61% rate, instead of the 3.01% rate.

yes, it looks very much like they have calculated the interest due as 28 days at 2.61%.

but even more irritating is that there seems to be no way to email them about this! all i can find is a general enquiry email form to fill in, but they have a warning in red that they cannot answer enquires about ones account using this, and to either telephone or visit ones branch!

surely that cannot be right? has anyone managed to successfully email them about ones accounts?

jack_daniels_old_number7

Hi to all.
Similair story to pumpkin soup
checked my statemant as follows 1/10/2012 interest paId gross £4.51 on £2;270.45. 03/09/2012 interest paid gross £5,63 on£2115.86 that does not look right, not much i know but its the principle of the thing with me. So trotted of to the bank to deposit more money to keep barclays afloat.Brought this up with cashier and was told its probaly the interest rate gone down.From what to what because on my online account i have not seen the rates alongside these figures they have appeared to have pulled out of hat.
None of the counter staff could tell me what had happened and would get the manager to call me as he was busy.Still no call this was yesterday, not happy.Time to look for another bank me thinks,is the nationwide any good. Barclays staff not good

paul234_2

Hi all, I had to phone Barclays yesterday about an odd letter I'd received, I took the opportunity to ask about this as I have had the same issue.

It took me ages to get through, but once I had the woman I talked to was very pleasant and helpful. She said that the last month's interest had been calculated using 0.40% as the bonus rather than 0.60% (I opened mine when it was the 1.00% bonus, but I'm assuming this error applies to that too). She said the remainder of the interest should appear in our accounts soon, probably some time next week.

G4MHJ

Just found this forum and I too made a telephone call to Barclays on 1st October.
I was put on hold a couple of times as they didn't have a clue what the issue was concerning lower interest. The heading against the interest amount on my online statement was worrying to me as it just stated INTEREST rather than INTEREST PAID GROSS. I told them it looked as if they had taken tax but was assured that ISA are tax free! They then stated that comparing the beginning of September and October interest amounts was due to the longer September period due to the August Bank Holiday (as already mentioned before). Today I spotted an additional interest payment of £1.75 added yesterday. No real explanation what this was for.
I have three other Barclay ISA accounts and these were lower interest as well. No additional interest was added to these accounts.
I see Barclays are attempting to buy ING Direct where I have other accounts. It might be time to find a new home for my ISA's assuming I can transfer the monies into a new one - not like Barclays.

d63

this just seems to go from bad to worse. for although they have now added on the extra money to correct for their having calculated the interest for the period of the 3rd to the 30th september (28 days) at 2.61% instead of 3.01%, they have not backdated it properly, with the result that the balance shown on my statement for october 8th, is actually the balance that it should have been on october 1st. i.e. they have not included the pro rata interest for the period october 1st to the 8th.

SuperShrimper_2

Hi All,

Not sure if you have had an reasonable response on this, but I noticed this on my paper statement that was sent through at the beginning of October.

I did some research online (Barclays.co.uk/P1242606179497) and found that for new Barclays Loyalty ISAs opened after the 24th September 2012 the bonus rate was only 0.60%. Those that opened before this date SHOULD have continued to receive the previous rate of 1.00%.

After going into Barclays and the account adviser logging into a section of Barclays (looked like an internal FAQ) he found that due to a human error, when the rate was changed, it was changed for all Loyalty ISAs instead of just new ones.

I did ask for the account manager for a copy of the internal FAQ, but he said he was not allowed to print it, but he did turn his screen around so that I could read what was on the internal FAQ and it confirmed what he told me.

He went on to tell me that the error was noticed after about a week (I think, it was a week or so ago) and that the rates had been corrected (so people who opened with a bonus rate of 1.00% should still be getting the 1.00%

It went on to say that Barclays would be sending out letters informing people of this error (I haven't had mine yet, but I would assume it might come in the next statement).

He said that the interest had been calculated and any accrued interest had also been calculated, so that when the interest credited it would return the clients account to how it should be had no error occurred. The only way that a client would knows is that they would either see the error of the 0.60% on their statement (like i did) notice that the interest was slightly down, or notice that there had been an extra interest payment made slightly after the October payment.

Hopefully the letter (assume its on its way after going through marketing and compliance departments to check its content and wording) will explain it in more detail, but hopefully (fingers crossed) they have sorted it. Would have been a bit nicer if Barclays had put something on their website informing people of this as well.

Regards

SuperShrimper

(Stay True, Stay Blue, Stay Southend United)