MSE News: Barclays to revamp current account fees – will you be better off?

0james0

I'm going to be hit hard with this.

I have large swings in my current account, sometimes a few thousand in credit, other times a few thousand overdrawn, using the current account and overdraft is convenient and until now relatively cheap.

If my account is £2000 overdrawn it will cost me £90 for the month! If someone was unable to clear their overdraft for the entire year, they would pay just over 50% interest. That is wonga type figures!

Archi_Bald

0james0 wrote: »

If my account is £2000 overdrawn it will cost me £90 for the month! If someone was unable to clear their overdraft for the entire year, they would pay just over 50% interest. That is wonga type figures!

Wonga would be more like 5,000%. The representative APR they have on their front page is 5853% APR. And still people take out loans with them. And still the FCA doesn't appear to be stepping in.

BillJones

0james0 wrote: »

I'm going to be hit hard with this.

I have large swings in my current account, sometimes a few thousand in credit, other times a few thousand overdrawn, using the current account and overdraft is convenient and until now relatively cheap.

If my account is £2000 overdrawn it will cost me £90 for the month! If someone was unable to clear their overdraft for the entire year, they would pay just over 50% interest. That is wonga type figures!

Then stop using your overdraft.

If I find something to be too expensive, I stop buying or using it.

merrydance

I too have received this letter stating my buffer is £15. I am a bit confused as I have a barclays additions account and I thought one of the perks is having an interest free overdraft up to £250. Guess I'll just have to give them a ring.

not_invented_here

So if there's no charge for the first £15 of your overdraft, but if you go £1 more overdrawn to £16 they charge you 75p/day...
That's:
0.75 x 365 = £273.75 in fees a year
So the APR on that £1 extra is:
(273.75/1) x 100 = 27,375%

Nearly 6 times worse than Wonga's 5,000-odd%.

Thanks Barclays for making my fees "simpler"! Those complicated low fees were a real pain in the !!!!. So much easier to understand them and pay double what I used to...

BillJones

not_invented_here wrote: »

So if there's no charge for the first £15 of your overdraft, but if you go £1 more overdrawn to £16 they charge you 75p/day...
That's:
0.75 x 365 = £273.75 in fees a year
So the APR on that £1 extra is:
(273.75/1) x 100 = 27,375%

Nearly 6 times worse than Wonga's 5,000-odd%.

Thanks Barclays for making my fees "simpler"! Those complicated low fees were a real pain in the !!!!. So much easier to understand them and pay double what I used to...

That's terrible maths...

lxworld

Barclays Media Relations have been in touch on behalf of their CEO. To read more go to http://chn.ge/1h3CK97


350 is good but we need more signatures!

ahxcjb

Blackdog1 wrote: »

We have good respectable jobs but still struggle to pay for our lives we live on £31 a week for food to give you an idea.

If you are living off of 31 GBP a week for food, then I assure you you do not have a 'good respectable job'. You actually have a '!!!! lowly paid job'.

HTH

Catriona_P

Should I be concerned that I actually havn't had a letter about all this?

I'm extremely lucky in that I've been working to get my Barclays overdraft down from £2.4k over the last 2 years - I have £200 left to pay off which will be done before June and then I'm closing my account. Changing terms like this is shocking and I really feel for people who are going to be stung like this and I don't have any advice I can give.

Comments like 'stop using your overdraft' are just unhelpful, when you've been caught in the spiral of debt it's immensely difficult to break out of it (speaking from my own experience). Admit I'm surprised to see that kind of mentality when Martin Lewis himself talks about how difficult it is. Not what I expected to see here but I guess it takes all sorts!

Gems82

I am guilty of having a very large overdraft on my Graduate account with Barclays which I have been living in for several years. The letter I got about their new daily charges was a big shock and a very harsh wake-up call. I previously struggled with their Personal Reserve and got myself into a bit of a spiral with that, which I am now finally out of, and they hit me with this instead!

I have no one else to blame but myself, and I'm lucky that they have not demanded I pay it all back in one go as some other banks have done to people I know. I will now be making an effort to finally get out of my overdraft. I keep reading on other posts about this that there will be no interest charged on the overdrafts anymore, just these daily charges. Is that correct? In which case, I won't be quite as worse off as I thought.

In the meantime, I'll be getting myself over to the Debt Free Wannabe area!