Help Needed with Barclays claim

Chinesan

Hello everyone.
I really need a good advise on my wifes Barclays bank account.
She opened this acc years ago and been given overdraft etc (not sure if it was paid acc, i think so but I need to double check it.)
However, this is not the biggest problem, so please just let me explain everything
Back whe she opened that account she was working full time, income coming every month.
Few years later she got pregnant and gave birth to our lovely son. She stopped working and the only income that was paid into her account was my sons child benefit +- 80£/pcm.
We were struggling financially and using her overdraft for living (1600£)
Now, somwhere in between all this she was offered two addons One for travel insurance and the other for electronics. Just after we found out how it works and how expensive it is plus the fact we never used any of those and keep paying the fees we tried to remove them from account but were unable to do so. The situation got ridiculous to the point that every month barclays takes away my sons child beneft almost in full for just the bloddy charges leaving 1600 overdraft unpaid like a loup circle and been doing it for the past 3 years!!!! My wife was away and i had no access to her acc to do something with it and now we just left it like that untill we put the claim plus compensation for taking child money away (if we can). Funny thing is - Ever since my wife came back and went to bank to get new card she started getting notifications online from bank regardng *bank willingness to help* and introducing her some money management tools.. Where were they fro the past 3 years!!!???

So thats it.. do u recon we have claim ? how to start it ???
Thanks a million from the bottom of our hearts (especially the little one ) for any help info whatever you can provide. :T

EachPenny

Chinesan wrote: »

Now, somwhere in between all this she was offered two addons One for travel insurance and the other for electronics. Just after we found out how it works and how expensive it is plus the fact we never used any of those and keep paying the fees we tried to remove them from account but were unable to do so.

Did she agree to purchase these products, and was she aware of the Terms and Conditions (and the costs) at the point she signed up?

TheBanker

Chinesan wrote: »

Just after we found out how it works and how expensive it is plus the fact we never used any of those and keep paying the fees we tried to remove them from account but were unable to do so.

How did your wife try to remove them and why was she unable to do so? Do you have any evidence that she tried to remove them and Barclays refused, for example a letter or date/time of a phone call or branch visit?

Shakin_Steve

She should have received, at least once a year, an annual eligibility statement. These list the ‘benefits’ on your account and ask you to check whether they still meet your needs, ie, would you be still be eligible to claim if you needed to. That would/should have been an opportunity to ring up and cancel if necessary.
We have the travel pack and received our letter last month.

Flobberchops

The Tech Pack is (currently) £9.50 and the Travel Pack £10.50, so with the £2 multi-pack discount that's £18 a month, so not sure how you could reasonably say it's taking almost all the child benefit. Why were you unable to remove these?

I estimate you would have paid about £45 a month in overdraft fees, assuming you were over £1000 overdrawn for most of each month. Now, that's not really Barclays fault, is it? You chose to use a facility that had been provided on the basis that it was optional and had an associated fee. Again, what steps did your wife take in that time to get out of overdraft, did she ask to have the fees frozen or the overdraft voluntarily reduced for example? The fact that she only started receiving mail after visiting a branch suggests a "gone away" mail marker may have been removed. If the bank has the reasonable belief that a customer is no longer resident at an address (for example through several instances of mail returned undelivered) they have a responsibility to stop sending confidential material to that address until they hear from the customer.

So no, I don't think you have much basis for a "claim" - the bank charged you to use facilities that your wife chose to take. By all means you can make a complaint and see if it results in a goodwill payment, but really the bank has done nothing wrong as far as I can see.