Barclays additions 'upgrade' without consent

French_Frog

Hi, I am new to this so please forgive me if this is in the wrong place. I have found plenty of threads on reclaiming overdraft and such fees off Barclays but not how to handle this specific one.
I am a long standing Barclays customer (31 yrs) who recently found as a result of the Whistleblower program that I had been 'upgraded' to Additions, then Additions Platinum and finally to Premier without my requesting it. I was aware I was paying fees as they are on my statements but was not aware that I neednt have been. When I queried this originally, I was told that my existing account had been discontinued and that this was my new syle account. I thought this meant that Barclays has stopped those types of account and introduced these new fee paying accounts and that I had no choice. The two subsequent steps arrived in the post as 'fait accompli' as if I had been promoted for good banking behaviour. As a non-working mum, I have no need of the 'services' provided with these costly accounts and certainly would never have requested one. Besides, I dont even meet the Barclays website stated criteria for a Premier Account. I have been paying these fees since 1999 unaware that free banking was still available at Barclays. I use my account very simply...pay bills, write cheques, no fancy things, a couple of standing orders to charities.
Barclays this week deny that it is possible that I would not have requested these. Then said that I had probably been offered Premier because they 'felt' I was a suitable candidate (despite no income and not meeting the Premier criteria and the fact Barclaycard,their sister company, refused me a credit card on the grounds that a nonworking mum was the same as an unemployed person). After pressure, they totally refused to allow me to escalate up the line or let me talk to my branch manager and offered me £150 'goodwill' and to remove the Additions fee henceforth from my account (but since the Premier fees are £1 less, this leaves me in the same position as they dont charge both Additions and Premier). I objected to this and have demanded evidence of any signature or verbal agreement on my part to any of these services. They suggested I talk to the ombudsman.
What now? Does anyone have the same experience and especially, has anyone beaten this? I would be grateful for any help.
Thanks

jonesMUFCforever

Write a letter of complaint to Customer services not the branch number.
Ask them to supply written proof of what you signed up for.

Customer services will do more for you than the branch.
If you do not get satisfaction then do as Barclays staff have told you - involve the Banking Ombudsman.

French_Frog

Customer Services are the ones who have served up all this stuff. I havent been near my branch as its nowhere near me....I cant phone them as Barclays allow no phone contact with branches as they did in the past.....in those days my branch used to fix everything really quickly and politely. Customer services centrally have been horrendous. But I will write to them instead of phoning. I agree it would be more 'official'.
Any other experiences out there?

regularsaver1

complain to customer relations (complaints dept)

JeremyZerg

I had a similar issue with Barclays. They "upgraded" my account at no charge (harhar), without my consent. I tend to scrutinise my account statements fairly regularly so I picked it up on what was effectively "month one".

The cretins in my local branch were utterly unhelpful and refused to do anything about this; even when I requested evidence of my supposed consent, they could not provide this.

Eventually (after, like, an hour), they refunded the £10 and "downgraded" my account when I threatened to take away my business. As soon as the money showed up in my account, I closed it.

I've held a private vendetta against Barclays ever since. I will never use their products and / or services ever again, unless I can screw them over whilst I'm at it!

Also, I advise all my friends and family that they suck. So far, I've cost the mighty blue blighters four whole customers! =D

TrickyDicky

Is it possible to take them to the smalls claims court?

Ask them for proof that you signed up to this scheme. If they cannot privide, claim back every monthly charge they have ever charged you. Im not sure what the time limit on these would be.

bairn1

I've been a victim too of being signed up to the additions account without my permission.

This was £6.50 a month for benefits that were useless to me (as I had similar benefits from another account), plus 80p a month for some sort of "overdraft protection" that again was useless to me. After numerous phone calls, I got put back on the basic account and after speaking to Customer Relations and asking if they would refund all my charges, they said they would respond to me in writing.

Several weeks later, I received a letter saying that Barcalys are "unable to refund [my] charges as you have been kept informed regularly of the account type through regular statments and letters". While I may have received the odd leaflet trying to sign me up to knew products, I'm sure I never received any letters regarding this. And while I admit I was careless in not spotting this in my statements before I did, any detail of new account charges in my statement would only have been apparent to me after the charges had been taken out my account!

Their letter of response also suggested that I contact the Ombudsman service if I'm not happy with their resolution, but because of the relatively small amount of money they've taken from me, and the amount of time I've had to waste on the phone to get just this far, I'm wondering if this is just going to be more wasted hassle and stress?

Needless to say, whether this gets sorted out or not, I'll be closing my account with Barclays and moving to a hopefully more trustworthy bank!!

jonesMUFCforever

It's people like you that make the banks loads of money!
It will be more hassle for Barclays so don't give up.

bairn1

Thanks ejones! I think I will carry on giving this a go. And when I open an account with a new bank, I'll make sure to check my statement regularly!!

French_Frog

Thanks ejones for the encouragement, I will keep at them too. If anyone has succeeded, let us know.
I did notice the charges on mystatements but had been ledt to believe there was no other type of account any more at Barclays and I did value and trust the long relationship I had had with them so I swallowed it, never thinking they would do this. How naive I was.
I will keep trying.
Let me know if you have succeedded.

emilia84

I have been in the same boat but I stupidly thought it was an overdraft fee!! Yes I have been niave and have written a letter to my branch about 3 weeks ago and I haven't heard anything back at all. I have been paying the charge for 3 1/2 years and by the looks of things I'm not going to get anything back at all. I'm really annoyed now!!! x