Barclaycard "Credit Balance Refund"

jonesMUFCforever

OP I have read this thread and I can't find any confirmation that you have checked your bank account that the direct debit is taken from to see whether the 14p is on there - after all the statement mentions - refund?

They could easily do this because they hold the bank account details - I can't see them bothering to send a cheque or keep the money for themselves.

agrinnall

fallen121 wrote: »

Presumably you all live in cities where there are plenty of Banks and shops that take credit cards. We are a tiny village. We have a Co-op, a premier store, a card shop, chippie, greengrocer, wholefoods shop, tea room, butcher and chemist. None of these places accept credit cards and won't even take debit cards unless the balance is over a certain amount and many places only take cash. We don't even have a post office anymore apart from a van that comes 3 times a week.

I don't believe that the Co-op won't take a credit card. And I would be surprised if none of the others did. I'm not sure that I've ever bought anything in Pitenweem but I have lived in rural Fife and most places have made a semblance of moving into the latter part of the 20th century, if not the 21st.

binaryuniverse

By something on Ebay. Use Paypal. Make sure you have no balance in Paypal (does anybody actually keep money in there?) Use credit card as backup funding source. Done.

fallen121

The Bank account which the DD comes off is checked every day and I am certain there's no 14p credit on there. And they haven't sent me a cheque. The money came off the May statement and I didn't get a June one which is normal when there is a zero balance so presumably if they were going to credit me it would have happened by now.

Sure I could buy something on eBay to clear a 14p credit if I really wanted to. I could travel anywhere and buy something on my credit card if I really wanted to. But I didn't want anything within the time period within which I was presumably expected to spend this 14p credit on eBay or anywhere else. The petrol solution seemed logical because it was something I needed and I was near a petrol station and I had my card. It just didn't work out so I left it.

Sorry if I gave the impression that I was asking for ways in which to spend the 14p. I couldn't figure out how to do it EASILY given that I am not a big shopper and I don't have access to a lot of big shops on a daily basis. I guess I could have figured it out but hey 14p wasn't really high on my list of priorities so after my botched attempt to zero it with a petrol purchase I just left it. In fact I wasn't really bothered much about it at all because I figured that at some point I WOULD buy something and then I would sort it out.I didn't realise that having a credit balance was an issue. I just assumed that it would come off the next time I used it at a restaurant or whatever.

Yes, perhaps I was a little hasty to claim that the Co-op don't take credit cards. But you'd be hard pushed to do a big shop in our one as it is so small they don't even have trolleys. They would block the single aisle. Most of the smaller shops aren't as geared up for card payments as the bigger towns. Possibly because of the cost. The chippie has a sign saying cash only. Most of the shops in the village are small places where you maybe buy a newspaper or a soft roll or a 25p packet of aspirin. Not the sorts of things you would tender a credit card for. I expect people probably do use credit cards for small amounts under £1 but I have seen many smaller shops with signs asking that people don't use debit cards under a £5 spend and the greengrocer does this (I have no idea if this is legal and I am not about to ask). Presumably the policy for credit cards is similar. I don't know what the Co-op's policy is and it would take me too long to ask. Sometimes it depends on whether your card is contactless or not. Try having a stammer and having something go wrong in a shop which has happened to me many times. So I am not going to be standing there trying to get the words out to ask if it is ok to use my Barclaycard for a loaf of bread. I will just keep my mouth shut and use cash.

I don't know anybody who keeps a balance on a Paypal account either. I don't think Paypal are covered by the same levels of Financial Compensation as a conventional Bank. I might be wrong but I am not about to be waiting around for Paypal to go bust just so I can find out.

Oh and I don't live in Pittenweem. I just buy petrol there occasionally because it's closer than St Andrews or Colinsburgh. But the petrol station there is an unmanned one and it's definitely debit card only.

agrinnall

It's unlikely that the Co-op will have any lower limit on credit card purchases, so even if you only buy one item as long as it costs more than 14p and you pay off the balance in full when you get your statement that's sorted. It also sounds like you drive so just use the card at a petrol station other than the one that doesn't take them. You seem to be making up obstacles to getting this resolved.

fallen121

The "obstacles" are in everyone's mind. People keep making suggestions about how I might have spent this 14p. All I said was that I tried a few things but given where I live I don't use a credit card all that much so in the end I just left it. All of this is in the past now anyhow. The card has a zero balance, so whether or not the Co-op does or doesn't take credit cards is largely irrelevant. I do wish you would all stop making suggestions about I might have resolved the 14p credit I no longer have. It doesn't matter anymore, does it?

I am more bothered by the fact that Barclaycard can just remove money from people's accounts under the guise of a "refund". THAT was the original purpose of the thread. If you read the entire thread you will see that it consists almost entirely of people criticising me for for all the things I SHOULD HAVE DONE with my credit card which would have prevented the credit card being in credit in the first place. I accept that I should have made more of an effort. I am truly, truly sorry that I didn't do more to prevent this from happening. But I didn't realise that being in credit was a crime. Can you please STOP discussing how I might have spent this 14p?

I don't have the 14p anymore. Due in part to my not being more proactive at the local shops Barclaycard have taken the 14p and have (to their minds anyway) resolved the situation already. I now have a zero balance. But wherever the 14p has gone it hasn't come back to me. If this is regular policy then somewhere there is a suspense account where they are sticking all these credit balances and I want to know who (legally) that money belongs to and what they do with it if nobody complains. Do they donate it to charity? Do they use it for a staff knees up? I don't know. Because when they take this money they just take it with no explanation, they call it a "refund" and it disappears off into the ether. I don't think this is a particularly ethical way of doing things. It might be neat and tidy from an accounting perspective but that doesn't make it right.

Very early on in this thread I indicated that I would be contacting Barclaycard by secure message. I have now done this and have been assigned a Complaint Number. Clearly they are taking this seriously even if you lot aren't.

If you want to continue discussing all the things I might have bought with my credit card at the local shops or on eBay please feel free.

[Deleted User]

Barclaycard will tell you what they have done with the 14p. That should have been your starting point.

A normal process will be that they will have advised you to either spend it, ask for it back or they will donate it to charity.

It seems that you did neither of the first two options so they have gone with the third.

Barclaycard should always have been your first port of call.

Nullboris

Seems to me .. Get in contact .. secure mail or email them . Seems a lot of faff for 14p. Surely the amount of time writing about it is worth more than that ? Do they even know you've got a problem?
Twitter or facebook them text them .. write a letter (they should refund your postage if you complain)

eskbanker

fallen121 wrote: »

I had a 14p credit balance left on a Barclaycard. They kept writing to me about it, but I couldn't figure out how to withdraw or transfer it and I couldn't figure out how to spend money on the card in such a way that I could restore the balance to zero, because all payments on the card are made by Direct Debit.

Perhaps asking the obvious here, but what did the letters say would happen if you repeatedly failed to take any action and left the account in credit but dormant?

fallen121

fallen121 wrote: »

Very early on in this thread I indicated that I would be contacting Barclaycard by secure message. I have now done this.

And yet you're STILL advising me to "contact Barclaycard" when I did this already ages ago.....!!

Yes, it's just 14p. But if it ISN'T going to charity, then lots of 14ps adds up to a sizable sum. So perhaps not a complete waste of my time to question where all this money is going?

No objection if they HAVE donated it to charity. Don't recollect any of their original communications saying anything about charity though, because I would have been interested to know which one and might have made more enquiries. And usually they give you a choice.

But how hard would it have been to have a line on the statement saying "Credit Balance Donated to Charity"? Instead they have "Credit Balance Refund" and then underneath "Authorised by Signature". Whose signature? We live in an age of credit card scams so too right that flagged up a few alarms in my head.