Barclays losing £700

Johncp

I had an ING Direct savings account, who sold their UK holdings to Barclays. The originaly sort code and account number were re-routed to Barclays for some time but then disabled and it seems they were recycled for use by HSBC.

Barclays maintain they notified me by post but no matter how hard I tried, their system seemed incapable of updating my postal address and I never received the letter notifying me of the date when the old sort code and account number would be recycled.

Shortly after the recycling of the sort/acc number, a standing order I'd set up months back (and had not been disabled) paid £700 into the old sort code and account number from my Barclays business account. The same week, I noticed the money wasn't showing in my Barclays business savings account and got on the phone with them.

I spoke with the business banking team who put me on the phone to the complaints team. Nobody had any idea where the money had gone and it took a full 2 hours in the branch for them to even agree to investigate it.

Months have passed (this happened around 1 October 2014) and while Barclays have now been able to tell me that the money ended up in a HSBC account, HSBC won't deal with me and Barclays won't chase HSBC. Both banks have advised going to the financial ombudsman who is incredibly slow and so far has only been able to tell me that the scan of a final correspondence letter I produced wasn't sufficiently high-resolution.

I find this totally unacceptable and would like full recovery of the £700 that I lost - can you help me to 'name and shame' Barclays on this one? Even if I were at fault, they've provided absolutely no help in reclaimining the cash.

Where do I start?

PeacefulWaters

Your complaint is with Barclays.

If you're not happy with how it's handled escalate to the FOS. Do this anyway.

You can try to get an alternative response by contacting them on Twitter. This approach sometimes shakes an organisation into action.

Alternatively, try a financial journalist in press. Such as Sylvia Morris.

http://www.moneyobserver.com/author/sylvia-morris

ChiefGrasscutter

I received lots of emails as well as by post about the move
Looking through my email archive....
16/10/2012 Advising that Barclays had bought ING's UK savings arm.
28/11/2013 Advising that my account would be moved to within the Barclays website, giving full details of the process and timeline.
20/02/2013 A further reminder about my account was due to be moved.
Early 2014 various general emails advising of restricted ING access at certain weekends due to batches of accounts being moved to Barclays.
07/07/2014 Formal email notification of my account being moved this weekend.