Barclays Tax Haven ISA: Have you opened one?

funky04

account now open.........I have a barclays current account and applied online with a £1 deposit at end of march 08.

Received account number by letter on 4th May 08.

One months interest lost as I didnt want to deposit the full amount due to the delays........not happy it took soooooooooo long to open!

skooby_2

I can only recommend you complain to Barclays in writing.

I emailed them on 17th April and last week I received £50 for the trouble.

I am an existing Barclays customer and applied through my online banking on 28th March. I received a confirmation email on the same day stating that my application was being processed.

As nothing happened I enquired over the phone and eventually complained in writing. Initially, Barclays customer services replied with the standard letter that they would contact me by mid-May.

Finally, on Friday someone from their customer services department called to apologize about the poor service I received on the phone (I had to ring 3 times on 7th April before someone admitted that there was a backlog) and to offer £20 compensation for the trouble of calling so many times.

The chap also explained that Barclays had no record of my online application (!?). I offered to send them the email confirmation. Within 5 mins of faxing a copy of the email, I received a further call explaining that as a 'complete one off' Barclays IT could not trace my online application (!!!). :mad:

The chap again apologised profously and offered two solutions:

1. I re-apply for the ISA and he would put a note on my file to ensure the interest would be backdated to the beginning of the 08/09 tax year when the account is eventually opened.

2. offered £30 to compensate me for the loss of interest and leave it up to me to decide whether I wanted to re-apply for the ISA.

I decided to take the money and run. So £20 for phone trouble and £30 for loss of interest. :beer:

This is the address I used for my complaint: [EMAIL="customer.relations@barclays.co.uk"]customer.relations@barclays.co.uk[/EMAIL]

If you have applied via online banking it might be worth checking with Barclays that they have indeed received your application. The email confirmation you may have received could be an IT clitch. :mad:

ULTIMATE1

I applied for a Barclays Tax Haven on 06/03/08.I have been into my branch twice in that time and been told I would start earning intrest from the time I signed for my ISA,06/04/08.
Today I recevied a letter from Barclays which told me I would stat earning intrest from the time my ISA would open,which would be in about 4 weeks time.
Surely this can not be legal?As I have been miss informed by the bank.In all this time my £3600 as been in my current account earning me no intrest.
What am I to do?Especialy when the ISA was 6.5 when I filled out the paper work and now 6.25 .

Jon_Skint_Smith

Interesting....

My wife had a go yesterday not knowing about the Fax memo I mentioned above and was also told that interest will only be payable when the funds clear, "but not to worry as the bonus interest runs for the full 12 months from then" ??!!!
:mad:

May I suggest that you respond to that letter by a return letter stating politely your thoughts and mentioning that you have it from a good Barclays source that you know company policy is to back-date the interest to 14 days post application! Oh, and ask them to cancel the application if they do not confirm this in writing - speaking from experience; something they are very reluctant to do as it is nearly impossible to track the form in the Barclays Paper Jungle ISA Office!

As for the legality of it: doesn't seem right, but I cannot voice an opinion there. Dropping a letter into the FSA / ombudsman might get a reaction? Oh, mention that in the above letter for good measure.....

MTW_2

Mine finally opened yesterday.

I one asked for £100 to be used as an opening deposit and intended to drop the rest in as soon as it was open.

I tried to move the rest of the money last night using online banking and as you would expect.......It wouldn't work:mad: :mad: ................!!!!

kingmonkey

MTW wrote: »

Mine finally opened yesterday.

I one asked for £100 to be used as an opening deposit and intended to drop the rest in as soon as it was open.

I tried to move the rest of the money last night using online banking and as you would expect.......It wouldn't work:mad: :mad: ................!!!!

Do you mean BACS transfer from a non-barclays current account?

[Deleted User]

I had initially applied for the 07-08 ISA on 26th March, i also had huge trouble trying to contact them via the phone, only to be told mid April that i should recieve a welcome pack by the end of the month.

Only today did i recieve a letter explaining the delay is due to a "technical problem" as some of my details were not verifed correctly and so i am required to go to my local branch with some photo ID.

Not too happy by this, i headed to my local branch to be told i would have book an "appointment" to see an advisor (when i did this for the application, i had to wait 45 minutes), unhappy by this, i demanded they sort it there and then.

After 10 mins of faffing around, i was called over by an advisor and asked in quite a rude way, "how long have you lived at your current address?", to which i replied "12 years". Completely stumped, the advisor spent a good 2 mins tapping and clicking before turning around and saying, "Oh yes, the reason for the problem is that you applied for a Barclaycard last year and the computer thinks youve only lived at current address for a year, sorry about that.."

Completely baffled by this, i questioned if she actually needed any ID and how long it would take to open the account , i was told no and 10 days. What really confuses me though is that i work for Barclays, have a Barclaycard and i know that they have all those details aswell..i also have shares in Barclays :S

I can only assume Barclays are oversubscribed and want to get rid of applicants, as they gave me 10 days to respond before they would close the application process. As bizarre as it sounds thats what it would seem like.

My deposit cheque was for the full £3000 aswell so i will be writing a complaint and using this as a lesson that the best paying rate is not always the best, and far from it at the moment.

owitemisermusa

Please keep this poll open indefinitely cos the way things ae going, we'll all be waiting a while for Bars-of-Clay.

supersaver2007

l applied for the ISA at my local branch. Received letter dated 11th April 2008 informing me that my application is being processed and that due to high demand there may be a delay, and l should receive a welcome pack soon. l phoned a week ago to find out the situation with my application, was told the same as what was in the letter.

22 days later – no welcome pack, no ISA Account opened, no communication from Barclays. l am now thinking about canceling my application and open an ISA with another provider, maybe Alliance & Leicester at 6.25% (1% bonus for a Year) variable.

nathanhill69

Reading this thread it would seem the whole ID verification thing is one of the themes. This happened to my partner and myself on last years Tax Beater ISA. Both opened our accounts separately at different branches with all the necessary ID (in actual fact we both took in more ID than actually required) YET we were both later recalled to the individual branches due problem verifying our ID. Off we go to our individual branches only to be told that our ID was in actual fact fine???

This was just one of a long catalogue of errors Barclays made opening both of our accounts (to numerous to list) - I can only conclude that the ISA back office is not at all organised.

Once bitten, twice shy - I will in future avoid Barclays as it wasn't worth the hassle.