Barclays Tax Haven ISA: Have you opened one?

Ladybird123

Applied 2 April. Heard nothing until 28 April when I discover ISA has been opened for current tax year, not 07/08. Registered formal complaint at local branch and awaiting response.:mad:

rev_henry

Lokolo wrote: »

I am filling my ISAs for the longterm, I h ave a secondary savings account with R85 small amounts. But in 2009/2010 tax year I will be working as a year in industry. And I am actually planning on keeping the ISAs until I am 25 (now 19) for a decent house deposit.

Thought there'd be some reason for it . I would put my savings in the kaupthing account now as I'm also under the tax threshold, but I can't as I'm under 18 :mad:. So I use the ISA. Piece of slightly irrelavant information for you there!

FellowesWay

Visited branch 1st April. Filled in form, and wrote cheque for £3000 (2007/8 ISA) was assured it would be OK and that interest would be from 1st April - but as I do not have a Barclays account was told it would have to be sent to the ISA office. Not heard anything yet.

aged_parent_2

Both my husband and I opened an isa on 9 April at local branch but still have not got account number - been waiting to pay in money since then!

siblig

On 5th April this year my husband & I each applied in Barclay's Woking branch for a tax haven Isa for the full £3600.00 each for the tax year starting on 6th April 2008. At no time was any delay mentioned, and we assumed that as all our details had been entered the Isas would be up and running within a couple of working days of the 6th April. When we noticed the Isas had not started, we were told there was a delay but that the interest would be backdated to the date of the application. Last week my husband noticed an error on a letter Barclays had sent him. When he went to the branch he again asked why the Isas had not started, again he was assured that the interest would be backdated. Today I went into Barclays at Woking to complain as I had received a letter dated 25th April,apologising that they were experiencing a short!! delay in opening the Isa accounts, & that I should expect to account to be opened within approximately 4 weeks, & that the Isa would start earning interest from the date the account is opened. I have logged a complaint with Barclays. However we are obviously not the only people suffering financially because of Barclays withholding of information,when we made our application, about the possible delay in opening the Isas . If we had known of the likely delays we would not have continued with the application because of the loss of interest that that would entail. Surely this is a case for investigation by the Financial Regulating authorities. We feel that Barclays have obtained our money unfairly, and that this cannot be legal. Please can you advise what action we can take to get Barclays to redress the losses of interest we are incurring

Lokolo

siblig wrote: »

On 5th April this year my husband & I each applied in Barclay's Woking branch for a tax haven Isa for the full £3600.00 each for the tax year starting on 6th April 2008. At no time was any delay mentioned, and we assumed that as all our details had been entered the Isas would be up and running within a couple of working days of the 6th April. When we noticed the Isas had not started, we were told there was a delay but that the interest would be backdated to the date of the application. Last week my husband noticed an error on a letter Barclays had sent him. When he went to the branch he again asked why the Isas had not started, again he was assured that the interest would be backdated. Today I went into Barclays at Woking to complain as I had received a letter dated 25th April,apologising that they were experiencing a short!! delay in opening the Isa accounts, & that I should expect to account to be opened within approximately 4 weeks, & that the Isa would start earning interest from the date the account is opened. I have logged a complaint with Barclays. However we are obviously not the only people suffering financially because of Barclays withholding of information,when we made our application, about the possible delay in opening the Isas . If we had known of the likely delays we would not have continued with the application because of the loss of interest that that would entail. Surely this is a case for investigation by the Financial Regulating authorities. We feel that Barclays have obtained our money unfairly, and that this cannot be legal. Please can you advise what action we can take to get Barclays to redress the losses of interest we are incurring

Complain even more?

Um as for the witholding information, how do you know the clerk who served you didn't know? If you had asked then she would have told you or gone to find out, but you didn't. You assumed. And what does assume do? (lol my computing teacher always said this), it makes an !!! of u and me.

bublina

the same thing happened to me last year and they have backdated the interest. so hopefully we have nothing to worry about for this year as im still waiting for mine to be opened too.

Super_Consumer

We went into Barclays to open an ISA each and were told we needed an appointment. Rather than walking away then we made an appointment for the following week.
We turned up early for our appointment and were then kept waiting for 15 minutes after our appointment time. We were asked lots of irrelevant questions and despite objecting to the process this went on for another 15 minutes. After questions about salaries, council tax, etc. we got up and walked out. We've never done this before but we were being mucked about by Barclays and wasting our time.

We went home, went on-line and were signed up with A&L within ten miutes! We may get a slightly lower rate but there was no way we were going to be treated so badly by a supplier.

victoriab

We decided not to open Barclays ISAs this year following last year's fiasco. We applied in branch on 7 April 2007. My account was finally opened at the end of June 2007. OH's account wasn't.

After several letters and 'phone calls to the complaints line (at least they provide one and it's an 0800 number), they finally admitted in August that they had lost his application with all his details and the cheque for £3000. They sent us 2 bottles of wine to say sorry.

He completed a new appln, took it in to his local branch for all his id to be checked again. A week later they sent it back with a hand written comp slip telling him off for not taking it into a branch.

More complaint 'phone calls later and the account was finally opened in October - oh and 2 more bottles of wine. (We only drank one - it wasn't very nice...)

After the first couple of weeks of waiting, I transferred all the money back to a high rate savings account and got them to tell me when the cheques were going to be presented.

The interest on both ISA accounts was backdated to 6 April 2007. So on OH's money we received double (pretty high) interest for 6 months!

So no Barclays ISAs this year. You'd think they'd have learned from their mistakes last year.

I used to work for Barclays, through no fault of my own - I was transferred over when they took over the Woolwich - not the best experience of my life...

rev_henry

Super_Consumer wrote: »

We went into Barclays to open an ISA each and were told we needed an appointment. Rather than walking away then we made an appointment for the following week.
We turned up early for our appointment and were then kept waiting for 15 minutes after our appointment time. We were asked lots of irrelevant questions and despite objecting to the process this went on for another 15 minutes. After questions about salaries, council tax, etc. we got up and walked out. We've never done this before but we were being mucked about by Barclays and wasting our time.

We went home, went on-line and were signed up with A&L within ten miutes! We may get a slightly lower rate but there was no way we were going to be treated so badly by a supplier.

Good for you! It's time the banks learned that they have to work around their customers and not operate to their own convenience. But a situation where that will actually happen is, I fear, a long way off.