Is it just me or are Barclays a pain ?

big4split

I've had the same Barclays current account for about 39 years.

Over the past couple of months, like many here, I've started opening current accounts with other banks to get better rates of interest.

To build up the balance in the other accounts I transfer money from Barclays into the other banks.

Four or five times recently I've received a message on screen saying
"Your payment has been delayed as we need to do some extra checking. These checks help us to protect your account from potentially fraudulent activity. As a result, your payment is scheduled for xx month 2014."

The payment gets delayed for at least a day, but yesterday they cancelled the transfer of money because they could not get me on the phone to confirm it was ok. They also locked me out of telephone banking until I phoned them.

I would close the Barclays account but it is really convenient for using the branch.

Has anyone else had problems with Barclays delaying payments ?

mgdavid

Oddly, no! I've been with Barclays for 45 years, have 3 a/cs with them, also a couple of non-Barclays and am frequently shuffling sums between all of them. Especially recently as I'm receiving PCLS from 3 pensions. I've been expecting what you've experienced but so far haven't been affected. Is it pure statistical random-ness, or am I seen as a slightly less dodgy character than you ?
Who knows?

Armorica

Transferring large amounts of money (or frequent smaller amounts) away from your account is likely to be considered out of character relative to your previous patterns. Barclays, perhaps not unreasonably, are checking the payment is not fraudulent.

If it was someone else making the transfers, would you want Barclays to stop them?

Wibblemonster

I've been with Barclays for about 22 years and over the last few years I've had problems with them.

I take what was said about changing your pattern of banking activity and I think Barclays have a duty of care of your money to stop fraudulent activity, but at what point do they learn?

Last year I was move frequent sums of money around from various accounts and was pulled up by their online fraud protection department. Once this was resolved I continued the activity over a period of time for it to be randomly pulled up again a coupe of months later. It seemed odd an inconsistent to me, especially as the a simple check on my account would have shown this was normal behaviour and wasn't even the largest amount I have moved.

I sadly echo the same issues in that Barclays is incredibly convenient (if only geographically) and I would move if I had a better alternative.

MadMat

I've had problems with them fairly regularly blocking my debit card for too many cardholder not present transactions (I do almost all my shopping online) but not with moving money via online banking.

Mat

jimjames

It's not just Barclays, maybe all banks are clamping down to prevent fraud which will also catch genuine transactions.

I've had payments stopped from my Cahoot account until they've phoned me. Payment was actually cancelled and recredited to my account, then redone once I spoke on phone.

Payments with Nationwide stopped until I could use their stupid card reader device yet I could split the payment into 4 instead and it all went through ok.

Totton

Until this year I had been with Barclays for over 40 years but left them after some very poor service. I did experience them calling me about the odd payment here and there, I thought it was a good thing and quite neat that some of the checks were simple automated calls requiring specific key presses at my end.

evenasus

We've been with Barclays 54 years.

The only problem we've had in all that time, was with them sending our bank statement to my son - twice!
My son lives in the same town but a totally different address.

Maybe we should have screamed compensation.

I've moved quite high amounts of money with them and never had a problem.

I've found them the easiest institution for opening ISAs.
We each opened a two year fix this morning, ready to transfer the Britannia ISAs that mature at the end of the month. It took all of two minutes.

sandsy

This has happened to me a couple of times.
I finally worked it that it was when the sum of payments for the day exceeded £10k as £10k is the daily limit.

kangoora

Been with Barclays for about 36 years, no more. Transferred my account to Santander 123 as I worked out I would be at least £150 better off just for doing the exactly the same banking I was doing with Barclays.

I'd prefer to get £150 in my bank account rather than have Barclays suck it into their corporate profits

noclaf

as per kangoora..am in process of transferring to santander 123 current a/c in next few weeks..been with barclays more than 20 years but finally decided its time to make that change...paying £7 per month for rubbish interest rates seems bit silly...and they are lowering the already poor interest rate even more in november so timing couldnt be better!