Barclays

Flobberchops

It seems crazy that Barclays would allow a £1000 overdraft go an additional £6000 into unarranged territory and then allow that situation to perpetuate for a decade without calling in the debt, freezing it, or passing it to collections. Crazy, but not 100% unbelievable. It's almost equally crazy that a customer in financial hardship would be willing to pay this kind of money for ten years without lodging a complaint, missing a payment, or any similar uncooperative action!

Your partner should be able to contact the Business Banking team - a quick look on the Barclays homepage suggests they could do this by phone, secure message, or business-hours webchat if a visit to branch isn't possible.



There's also a section that suggests your partner may be eligible for help and possibly a refund.

https://www.barclays.co.uk/important-information/arrears-assistance-review/ - there's a freephone number they could call for more info.

xlnc99 wrote: »

send emails to barclays including the CEO. When ive had issues with them ive done that previously and its dealt with imeddiately and from people higher up.

I'll have to take it on faith that you've had success with this method but I guarantee you there must be hundreds of people trying this "email the CEO" tactic at any given time. Jes Staley (or whoever) will have neither the time or the grassroots operational knowledge to help Joe Bloggs of Milton Keynes who wants to talk to somebody about their overdraft.

jonnygee2

From experience sending a letter to Barclays customer services and you become a simple statistic and into the system you go, Barclays also tend to write off their liabilities in a very short space of time and pass them on the Debt Collection agents and down that route you go also.

Don't bother emailing the 'CEO'. CEOs have communications teams around them, your email will just be picked up by an intern and forwarded to somewhere in customer service again. Not helpful.

You need to make your customer service query into a complaint. Complaints go to specialist teams, who are far more skilled, and also have more power than frontline customer service staff. Email Barclays and make it very clear that you are making a formal complaint. Write a brief summary of the issue and emphasise that due to the disability, repayment is impossible.

They will have up to 8 weeks to make a final decision, if you don't like their decision you will be given details to take it to the ombudsman. You cannot go to the ombudsman until the end of this period.

colsten

Flobberchops wrote: »

I'll have to take it on faith that you've had success with this method but I guarantee you there must be hundreds of people trying this "email the CEO" tactic at any given time. Jes Staley (or whoever) will have neither the time or the grassroots operational knowledge to help Joe Bloggs of Milton Keynes who wants to talk to somebody about their overdraft.

My experience when complaining to CEOs of banks and other companies is that your complaint will almost always be picked up by a senior person who has more competence, and is more empowered, than your usual Customer Service team. All large organisations I have come across do have Executive Complaint Managers, and do take complaints rather seriously when they have not been handled well by their CS. Generally the CEO would not get involved him- or herself, although I have had a couple of direct responses from CEOs, and the resulting actions were much to my satisfaction. I reckon it's a lot to do with how reasonable your complaint is, and how you formulate it.

Flobberchops

colsten wrote: »

My experience when complaining to CEOs of banks and other companies is that your complaint will almost always be picked up by a senior person who has more competence, and is more empowered, than your usual Customer Service team.

Perhaps. It's unlikely to attract the personal attention or intervention of the CEO, more likely the complaint is referred to some fast-track handler. Making a concise formal complaint through the correct channels would probably give the same end result.

eskbanker

It's still not clear to me that OP actually has a valid complaint as such anyway - unless I've misinterpreted the lengthy posts, they're effectively wanting to conduct a negotiation to see if there's any alternative to repaying a large overdraft.

Sure, the bank hasn't shown much interest in negotiating thus far, but complaining about that may be counterproductive when looking for concessions, and writing off £7K of debt would be a major concession, regardless of OP's perception that this would be fair after paying them more than this over the years (which is unfortunately irrelevant).

As ever in these circumstances, keeping up with the monthly payments is paradoxically hindering the situation, as banks will be more likely to negotiate if there's clear evidence of financial hardship, such as missing payments, but if OP feels that protecting the account-holder's credit status is important then that becomes self-defeating. I'd be amazed if the bank wrote off the debt full stop but doing so while leaving the account-holder's credit files unaffected is highly ambitious IMHO....

colsten

Flobberchops wrote: »

Perhaps. It's unlikely to attract the personal attention or intervention of the CEO, more likely the complaint is referred to some fast-track handler. Making a concise formal complaint through the correct channels would probably give the same end result.

It is immaterial whether the CEO deals with this him- or herself - as I said, they usually wouldn't. The main thing is that your case is being handled by someone in the Executive Complaints Team, who are a lot more senior, and a lot more empowered than the usual complaints handlers.

jonnygee2

It's still not clear to me that OP actually has a valid complaint as such anyway - unless I've misinterpreted the lengthy posts, they're effectively wanting to conduct a negotiation to see if there's any alternative to repaying a large overdraft.

In my view it doesn't matter if the complaint is valid or not really, by marking as a complaint (as long as the complaint involves some sort of material disadvantage, which this does) it will need to be dealt with via the regulated complaints process, which means the complaints team.

It seems the main barrier the OP has is getting hold of someone with the knowledge and authority to act. The complaints team will have this. I generally advise people escalate something as a formal complaint when they are stuck in a 'customer service loop' where frontline staff cannot act, and also don't know where to redirect people to to get their problem solved.

Terry_Towelling

From experience sending a letter to Barclays customer services and you become a simple statistic and into the system you go, Barclays also tend to write off their liabilities in a very short space of time and pass them on the Debt Collection agents and down that route you go also.

You sound like you've had to complain to Barclays more than once (in your own right) and have experience of the way they handle uncollectable debts. Could you enlighten us, please?

Can you also say with whom they registered as 'disabled' back in 2009? You do seem to have quite a good handle on the dates here, despite them going back many years.

xlnc99

Flobberchops wrote: »

It seems crazy that Barclays would allow a £1000 overdraft go an additional £6000 into unarranged territory and then allow that situation to perpetuate for a decade without calling in the debt, freezing it, or passing it to collections. Crazy, but not 100% unbelievable. It's almost equally crazy that a customer in financial hardship would be willing to pay this kind of money for ten years without lodging a complaint, missing a payment, or any similar uncooperative action!

Your partner should be able to contact the Business Banking team - a quick look on the Barclays homepage suggests they could do this by phone, secure message, or business-hours webchat if a visit to branch isn't possible.



There's also a section that suggests your partner may be eligible for help and possibly a refund.

https://www.barclays.co.uk/important-information/arrears-assistance-review/ - there's a freephone number they could call for more info.



I'll have to take it on faith that you've had success with this method but I guarantee you there must be hundreds of people trying this "email the CEO" tactic at any given time. Jes Staley (or whoever) will have neither the time or the grassroots operational knowledge to help Joe Bloggs of Milton Keynes who wants to talk to somebody about their overdraft.

Yes great success with this and in particular Barclays. It works. Granted the CEO wont reply (ive only had one CEO every reply directly to me) but the CEO will forward the message to someone who will look into the complaint as it come direct from the top. On top of that, its not just the CEO you email, its all the executive management team each company have around 10-12 people in high level positions. Easy to get their names on the companies website. They most definitive will reply and get it sorted.

xlnc99

jonnygee2 wrote: »

Don't bother emailing the 'CEO'. CEOs have communications teams around them, your email will just be picked up by an intern and forwarded to somewhere in customer service again. Not helpful.

You need to make your customer service query into a complaint. Complaints go to specialist teams, who are far more skilled, and also have more power than frontline customer service staff. Email Barclays and make it very clear that you are making a formal complaint. Write a brief summary of the issue and emphasise that due to the disability, repayment is impossible.

They will have up to 8 weeks to make a final decision, if you don't like their decision you will be given details to take it to the ombudsman. You cannot go to the ombudsman until the end of this period.

Worst possible advice ever. Customer complaint teams are just pawns who deal with thousands of complaints a week. You need personal attention and the only way is to email the CEO and executive team. I cannot tell you how many times they have helped me, over turned a decision from original complaint team and how much compensation i have got over the years doing this.