Barclaycard PPI Claim _Account Suspended Please advise!

CatyK

Hi I'm a newbie on here and hoping that you can help.

I followed Martin's advice re PPI reclaiming on behalf of my father, who has been a Barclaycard customer for decades and thus required a copy of his t&cs to get the ball rolling. Barclaycard replied in short as follows:

''I acknowledge that there has been a delay in responding to your client's request for information under Section 78. As you are aware, we are unable to provide historic terms and conditions and accept that we are therefore prevented from enforcing our agreement with you while this state of affairs continues. I note that Section 78 (6) (b) was repealed on 31 May 2008, meaning that it is no longer an offence for a creditor to fail to comply withS89 (1) for more than one month.

We are currently unable to provide a copy of the credit agreement you entered into. We accept taht we are therefore prevented from enforcing our agreement with you while this state of affairs continues.

With immediate effect, we have suspended your Barclaycard account. We have taken this action because in our view there is a significantly increased risk that you will cease to make payments to your Barclaycard account. This is a temporary measure which will be kept under review, we have not closed your account.''

There is more but this is the jist of it, I feel stymied and exasperated and am at a loss as to how to proceed. We received this letter on 17/05/13 and have heard nothing since. Can someone please advise me on:

(a) Any other routes I could take to get his t&cs
(b) If I could take the case to the Financial Ombudsman without them and ask them to investigate.

Thanking you all for your assistance in advance!

[Deleted User]

By requesting the terms and conditions of the card you have alarmed the Bank who think you (or your father) want to get out of paying the debt.
A simple call to the Bank explaining that you only wanted to further a potential PPI complaint should see the card reactivated.

You have no access to the Ombudsman over this as the Bank have acted properly and correctly , I'm afraid.

You don't need policy terms and conditions in order to complain about PPI, you need only the account numbers and valid mis-selling reasons.

BC_KT

They no longer have his original agreement on record, as such they've suspended the account, as a business this is the correct move in terms of "responsible lending". Most likely your father will have to negotiate a new credit agreement or at least clarify the situation to reinstate the account, he can call or write to them to find out what's going on with that.

Your complaint hasn't even made it to the complaint stage so you do not have the right to refer this to FOS. You need to actually put your complaint in first, and to do that you don't actually need a copy of the agreement - you just need to know if he paid PPI or not and if so valid complaint reasons. Easiest way to find out if he paid PPI would be for him to call Barclaycard customer services during business hours, if he states his query is with PPI the system will put him through to an agent who can tell him if he ever had it or not.

CatyK

Many thanks, I will give them a quick call tomorrow.

[Deleted User]

CatyK wrote: »

Many thanks, I will give them a quick call tomorrow.

I think your father (as the account holder) might be required to do this since he'll have to sign a new credit agreement in order to reactivate the card. He can also ask (if you don't know already) whether the account has PPI.
Do realise that PPI on credit cards appears on every monthly statement when the card has a balance. If your father's statements don't show PPI on a separate line then he's either paid off the balance or he doesn't have PPI.

dunstonh

If your father offers to complete a new agreement, they will re-activate the account.

I followed Martin's advice re PPI reclaiming on behalf of my father, who has been a Barclaycard customer for decades and thus required a copy of his t&cs to get the ball rolling.

That was not actually required. The only reason people ask for agreements is if they dont know if they had PPI or not or they are trying to get out of paying a legal debt. With credit cards, PPI wouldnt appear on the agreement and you get a monthly statement so can clearly see if there is PPI or not.

If the site is still telling you to get an agreement then it is wrong. It should state the times that you look to get an agreement.

[Deleted User]

dunstonh wrote: »

If the site is still telling you to get an agreement then it is wrong. It should state the times that you look to get an agreement.

Yes, you and I discussed this more than a year ago (when there was a spate of posts from people whose account was suspended) and messaged MSE with the suggestion that the wording of the initial advice be changed.
It no longer says complainants always need the agreement, but still suggests that "it isn't always necessary" which I think is still confusing.