Strange Barclays blue rewards issue?

Dan-1987

Got a bit of a strange one with my Barclays blue rewards,I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced the same? 

I’ve had a blue rewards account as long as I can remember maybe 10 years ish,obviously I pay the monthly £5 fee and then receive the £5 monthly rewards bonus-obviously breaking even-I used to have a Barclay loan for which I’d get an extra £3 monthly so it’d be £5 outlay for 8£ income but I haven’t had this for a couple of years at least so I’ve just been getting £5 for £5 month in month out no problem

Recently Barclays launched the rainy day saver which requires you to be a blue rewards member,no problem so I opened the rainy day saver and deposited 5k into it-it’s 5% interest on up to 5k

Now a week or so later I get an email saying that because I’m earning less in the blue rewards bonus than I’m paying out for on the monthly fee they are planning to close my account and as the rainy day saver is linked that will be closed and moved to a different account!

Annoyed and slightly confused I went to my local branch who knew nothing about it but after some digging told me that it could only be because I didn’t satisfy the criteria for the blue rewards anymore in that I only had one monthly direct debit set up on the current account-I didn’t ever really buy that to be honest but I sorted that-and now I’ve had a further email telling me of their intentions to go ahead and close the blue rewards account as per the original email

Obviously if I take out further products (life insurance/loans/mortgage) then my monthly bonus will increase and I will be able to keep my blue rewards and,along with it,my rainy saver but to me that seems a little out of order and when I mentioned that at branch he said that they couldn’t operate like that

Can anyone shed any light on this? 

I obviously want to keep my rainy day saver as it’s paying me £20+ a month in interest and I’m not losing out on the blue rewards account fee but taking out any further products is counterproductive 

grumbler

Dan-1987 said:

Annoyed and slightly confused I went to my local branch who knew nothing about it but after some digging told me that it could only be because I didn’t satisfy the criteria for the blue rewards anymore in that I only had one monthly direct debit set up on the current account-I didn’t ever really buy that to be honest but I sorted that-and now I’ve had a further email telling me of their intentions to go ahead and close the blue rewards account as per the original email

Obviously if I take out further products (life insurance/loans/mortgage) then my monthly bonus will increase and I will be able to keep my blue rewards and,along with it,my rainy saver but to me that seems a little out of order and when I mentioned that at branch he said that they couldn’t operate like that

Can anyone shed any light on this? 

I obviously want to keep my rainy day saver as it’s paying me £20+ a month in interest and I’m not losing out on the blue rewards account fee but taking out any further products is counterproductive 

I don't understand the bit in bold and how did you 'sort that out'? Do you realise that the DD has to be taken, not just added?

flaneurs_lobster

I've just set up a Barclays current account solely to take advantage of the Rainy Day saver rate. To balance out the fee/reward part of the Barclays Blue current account stuff I've got a couple of DDs paying out each month, a SO feeding £800 in on the 1st of the month and another SO taking (most of) it out 2 days later.

Have I missed some T&C detail about what's needed to run this account?

EarthBoy

Your post is a bit confusing.  Did you have two Direct Debits, or only one?

If you only had one Direct Debit, then you can't have been breaking even if you no longer had other Barclays products.  It's always, or at least for years, been in the terms and conditions that Barclays will cancel the Blue Rewards if the fee is more than you're receiving in rewards.

EarthBoy

flaneurs_lobster said:

Have I missed some T&C detail about what's needed to run this account?

No you haven't.  You're doing all that's required.

grizzlegrizzle

Yes, this sounds like another of Barclays screw ups. I got a nonsense email saying that I wasn't meeting the conditions as I hadn't paid in £800 that month (I had). But at least they weren't closing my account. This is next level and absolutely requires escalation. I'd make a complaint. 

Section62

grumbler said:

I don't understand the bit in bold and how did you 'sort that out'? Do you realise that the DD has to be taken, not just added?

EarthBoy said:

Your post is a bit confusing.  Did you have two Direct Debits, or only one?

If you only had one Direct Debit, then you can't have been breaking even if you no longer had other Barclays products.  It's always, or at least for years, been in the terms and conditions that Barclays will cancel the Blue Rewards if the fee is more than you're receiving in rewards.

Wild guess... the OP could have one DD mandate taking two DD's per month hence them getting the £5 for £5 and breaking even as they stated.  Barclays staff not being familiar with their own T&Cs are guessing the single mandate isn't good enough and two separate DD mandates are required to earn £5.  OP then adds another DD (mandate), but that doesn't work because Barclay's staff haven't correctly identified the cause of the problem - which as grizzlegrizzle implies is probably just Barclays being Barclays.

If so, I would second the suggestion of making a complaint.  Barclays utter inability to ever get my switching Blue Rewards bonus to work correctly earned me substantially more in compensation than the rewards I missed out on were worth.

Several of us also received the daft email saying we hadn't met the £800 pay-in criteria when we opened the new RDS account and paid in £5000 that month, and IIRC at least one forum member was given the duff answer it was because the money had been sent as a faster payment rather than as a standing order.

With Barclays this stuff just seems 'situation normal' far too often.

tarekac

I've had that email also, but also noticed that last month I didn't get the £5 reward even though nothing has changed with my account for more than 2 years now - I did still get the £3 reward for having a mortgage there though so that's working

I'm trying to resolve with them, will update here