Barclays Emergency Borrowing facility

Scrunchy

Can anyone help, i am unemployed for 3 years after maternity leave/redundancy and sickness . I have been stuck in my emergency borrowing facility for the last year. And before this I have dipped in and out of it pretty much every month for the last 10 years, i have just calculated my bank charges as totalling over £4000. Many months I could be charged as much as £65-75 and once I was even charged £95 in 2010. I never asked for this facility and believe it was left on my account from an Additions Account I once had, where they transferred me to a current account with this facility instead of a basic current account. Even though I was a customer who regularly went over my overdraft and clearly not a candidate. I have been told if they removed it, it would affect my credit rating which put me off cancelling it .incidently I was talked into getting an Additions Account originally as I needed an overdraft and this was sold as my only option. I am financially struggling and often miss payments
Could I succeed in reclaiming some of the charges?
I don’t know the exact dates of when I started an Addition Account, or Emergency Borrowing facility, do I need to find this out and if so how? There are 10 years of statements online, but I believe it was before this.
Thanks everyone

[Deleted User]

You need to post on the DFW Board to get this down and cleared

Terry_Towelling

Are you saying you were mis-sold the Additions product and later, when switching from that product your options were also misrepresented?

Can you quantify exactly how your financial situation was worsened through these processes? - i.e. how much worse was it than it would have been with different/more suitable advice/options. If you can, you may have an argument to put to Barclays.

Scrunchy

Thanks Gary
I am new to this , what is the DFW board?

Scrunchy

Thanks Terry
Yes I was missold the Additions Account as I originally needed an overdraft and this was sold as the only option
Also a number of years later after never using any of the perks I cancelled and I wasn’t placed on the basic current account which has no bank charges but rather one that had
In terms of quantifying how it made me worse off, I’m not sure how I could do this other than using my statements as evidence? Any advice appreciated

Flobberchops

If you've incurred charges, then evidently you've been using the facility, so you couldn't really argue that you don't want or need it. Likewise, when the Additions account was migrated to a current account, it would be standard procedure to keep the overdraft and/or emergency borrowing facility in place, because it would be a huge source of complaints if it was taken away without agreement. You wouldn't have been migrated to a Basic Account as this is a credit-scored option reserved for those who don't meet the criteria for a standard current account, but that's probably not what you meant. If you mean a free account, then sure, the current account you have now is free to use (no monthly fee) but there are charges if your account usage means you go overdrawn. Sorry to be glib, but stay within your means if you don't want the bank charging you to use its money?

Where you perhaps have a valid point is the fact that emergency borrowing is much more expensive than an arranged overdraft (£5 a day compared to 75p a day) so you could argue that if you've had any kind of financial review recently, you could have been offered an overdraft instead of the EB.

Lastly, if you genuinely feel you were missold the Additions account, you should make a complaint. Although it was industry standard at the time, it's now mostly accepted that it's not a consumer-friendly practice and is much less prevalent. Still, it seems you've been making use of the facilities provided (expensive as they are) and have had plenty of time to request an amendment to your account. So if it was me across the desk, I'd be asking, why only now?

You could probably get a small gesture of goodwill in consideration of your dissatisfaction, maybe in the £100 ballpark. I think it's very unlikely you'll be able to get a full refund of thousands of pounds of fees going back a decade, though.

Terry_Towelling

I'm only spitting in the wind here but I'd be inclined to launch my case against Barclays asserting it to be a fact that the Additions product was sold to you as your only option to get an overdraft but you now believe that to be untrue. It is fairly well known that these sorts of account were heavily plugged by bank staff at the time (not just Barclays). Of course you need to be reasonably confident that it wasn't your only option to get an overdraft and you should reinforce the point that you neither wanted, needed nor used any of the so-called 'value-added' features beyond the overdraft that you now believe was also available in a fee-free product.

I think you'd need to work out the cost to you of the Additions product and try to understand how the Additions overdraft fees may have differed to the fees of a more suitable product - if they even did differ.

When it comes to the product that came after the Additions account you'll have to make more assertions that you weren't properly advised or made aware of what was happening and how that would affect you financially. Remember you are trying to make a case for the difference between what you actually paid in charges and what you would have paid had Barclays been looking after your best interests rather than their own - hopefully the calculations work out in your favour or it's a non-starter.

Obviously don't make stuff up but put your case as fact as far as you are aware (with properly thought out amounts) and wait for Barclays to either agree with you or defend their position. Be prepared to answer questions like, 'why have you waited so long before complaining?'

Good luck and try to stop going overdrawn.