Barclays Bank Issues

terry.h

I hope this is the right place to post and ask about this...

Last week all of my Barclays accounts were frozen, business, personal (including joint) and community.

After phone calls to fraud, emails to head office and 2 hours in branch I was able to get my accounts unblocked and find out what the reason was.

A customer of my limited company had reported that they hadn’t received a product they paid for (just 3 days before) and as such Barclays blocked everything.

Regardless of any investigation into the company I understood a limited company was a completely separate legal entity that should in no way affect the directors (unless proved of wrongful trading) so I am trying to see if the way Barclays reacted to this was wrong.

I had no access to any accounts for 2 days and it was only luck after several calls by the staff member in branch that someone in the fraud department understood the what a limited company was. The rest just said tough, it takes 10 days to investigate.

Sorry for the long post, what is everyone’s view on this?

[Deleted User]

Barclays have behaved as any other bank would. They did the right thing.

18cc

No way should Barclays have frozen a company account on on the basis of one complaint and certainly should not have a frozen personal accounts when the complaint was against the company

terry.h

Two very different views.

I don't believe any bank would have done the same, what they did seems far too extreme to me.

If I made a complaint to my bank about Currys not delivering a product, would all of their directors' bank accounts be frozen? Of course not.

Terry_Towelling

Part of the issue here is that we don't know exactly what the complainant said. Neither do we know who is the complainants bank. For all we know they could have told their bank, they'd been scammed in APP style. Their bank will then have warned Barclays about the possible scam payment and the accounts will have been frozen to stop the money being moved any further.

Whether it was appropriate for Barclays to block both business and personal accounts I'm not sure, but if the report did suggest fraud, then maybe it was justified. What we need is for customers and banks to correctly classify disputes rather than treating everything as potential fraud as seems to have happened here.

I think we can all look forward to seeing more of this sort of thing now that banks are going to be considering paying out in such scams.

terry.h

It seems very strange that this can happen without proof, it seems I could just pay someone for something and then tell my bank it's a scam and this is what would happen.

Fine, freeze the business account to stop the money moving if they believe something is up but if it was fraud that money would have been long gone.

After looking into it further it seems (after being given references by bank) that the person paid incorrectly into the business bank account (previous customer) for some kind of car payment, they then obviously wanted to get it back and this all happened.

It's having no access to my personal stuff (plus they also blocked my wife access to our joint accounts) which is what has really annoyed me.

colsten

It is impossible for anyone to say, based on the information given here. We have no knowledge of the nature of the transaction, the complaint, the business, or the movement of money between the Ltd company and the personal accounts. Whilst it is definitely possible that Barclays overstepped the mark, an open Internet forum doesn't seem to be the right place to decide one way or the other.

OP, if you are convinced they went too far, you can raise a formal complaint, with or without the help of a solicitor. If I were you, I would also review where my accounts are being held. As always, it seems rather risky to rely on a single financial institution. As this case demonstrates once again.

terry.h

Lesson learnt regarding keeping all of my money with Barclays, I will now being transferring some away. I've always banked with Barclays and never had issues.

I am already in the process of raising a complaint with the bank, I just wanted some opinions that was all.

Terry_Towelling

terry.h wrote: »

After looking into it further it seems (after being given references by bank) that the person paid incorrectly into the business bank account (previous customer) for some kind of car payment, they then obviously wanted to get it back and this all happened.

I'm with you on the annoyance and inconvenience factor here. In fact, from what you say, the person making the payment sent the money to the wrong account by mistake, realised their error and asked their bank to get it back.

If that is true, and it was made clear to Barclays by the complainants bank, then it seems you have had to pay the price for the sender's ineptness and that isn't right. Surely Barclays could just have 'seized' the transaction in question and contacted you about the senders request to be repaid?

I'm wondering whether the dispute process surrounding bank transfers isn't comprehensive enough for banks to properly identify the type of problem and so apply an appropriate sanction at the receiving end.

If I've properly understood the situation I'd be complaining to Barclays about a disproportionate response to something not of your making and where there was no suggestion of fraud or devious behaviour on your part whatsoever.

mrmajika

It seems quite poor to me. I suppose there may be the suggestion that the complaint (which we don't know the details of) suggests money laundering, in which case the bank may be obligated to freeze accounts in situations where they feel the complaint is credible.

To me it seems poor and I'd be looking elsewhere for my financial products. In any case, it's always good to have a couple of accounts running with different institutions to avoid such problems.

18cc

Would echo the sentiments above it is worth having more than one bank account with different institutions and possibly even completely separate your business and personal banking with different banks unless you feel there would be a detriment there somehow
these days there are far too many bank accounts being frozen a lot of which deserve to be I'm sure but some of which ptobably do not.

Hopefully you will get some money as compensation from your complaints