Bank Accounts Frozen

terry.h

I know this has been discussed before, but my bank accounts with Barclays have been frozen and are under review. I have so much going on at the moment and I'm very stressed over this, I have done nothing wrong so I wanted to ask whether any of these may have caused a freeze:

A customer of one of my businesses (bank account not held with Barclays) reported the company for fraud. This has now been withdrawn and other bank account unfrozen.

I am liquidating my main company, they may have now received a letter from the liquidators to close the business account.

I have just taken a loan to pay off my car finance, the company (Mercedes) will be taking a large payment of 13k by direct debit.

Does anyone have any idea? I'm pulling my hair out here and I don't know what I've done.

18cc

Yes I can understand this is very stressful for you but try not to worry because the truth of the matter is there is nothing you can do.

depending on why they have frozen the account they may not even talk to you about it until they have completed their investigations

the best thing you can do is perhaps try and ask at the branch if there's any information but if they say that they can't help then just leave it because there's no point worrying about something that you have no control over

sooner or later probably in a few weeks time they will get back to you with the results of their investigations

terry.h

Thank you.

They've told me it will take up to 10 working days, they won't say anything else at all.

As I'm closing my business I don't even have wages going in so I can't withdraw those (all I am allowed to get out) and my savings are also with Barclays so I'm pretty screwed if this goes past the end of the month when I need to transfer money from saving to the joint bills account to pay for the next month.

Everything has all happened at once and I can't help but panic right now.

terry.h

Sorry, another thing. if Barclays for whatever reason do close my accounts, do I get my money back ok?

Ergates

terry.h wrote: »

Sorry, another thing. if Barclays for whatever reason do close my accounts, do I get my money back ok?

If they just close them, yes.

If, for whatever reason, the National Crime Agency (who review the Suspicious Activity Report it seems likely has been raised) decided the money in your account was either the proceeds from crime, or was being laundered, then they can apply for a court order to seize it. The seems extremely unlikely however.

[Deleted User]

Yes, as long as the money is clean.

terry.h

Well that's a bit of a relief, the money is most certainly clean. Just have to wait then. It's only been 1 day and it's stressing me out.

Ergates

terry.h wrote: »

It's only been 1 day and it's stressing me out.

That is a totally reasonable reaction.

18cc

Yes a very reasonably action and many people who have had this happen to them have also got extremely stressed

one thing perhaps you can do if you haven't done already is to think about opening another bank account or maybe two elsewhere so that at least you have backups in the future

let us know what happens when you hear back from barclays

terry.h

Thanks everyone for the kind words, hopefully it will be resolved soon.

I've also now got someone in customer relations looking into it after an email to head office, so hopefully they can do something for me.

They tell me up to 10 working days but I've read that people can wait months. Do you think they're being realistic with their timescale to me?

Would a Direct Debit of 13k trigger this (as it was £300 before)? Just trying to work out what has happened.