Barclays Tax Haven ISA: Have you opened one?

ULTIMATE1

Good idea,I think we all should be ready for a good old rant...Lol
P.S.Anyone collecting ipoints and having problems,take a look at my last post.Just put ipoints in the seach at the top of the page and choos forum,you will be directed there.

John_Pierpoint

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

reserved for my mega rant in preparation.:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:.

How many of you have had a letter like this from Barclays?

27th January 2009
Dear Mr Dog,
We are sorry you have had to contact us about the level of service you have received from Barclays and thank you for taking the time to do so.
Your complaint has been forwarded to our Customer Relations area, who will provide you with a full response as soon as possible. However the ISA Tax Haven product has proven to be more popular than anticipated and we are experiencing some delays in responding for which we apologise and thank you for your patience.
In the meantime if you wish to discuss this matter further please call us on 0845 609 0806 I have enclosed a leaflet explaining how Barclays work to resolve complaints, which I hope you will find useful.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Wildman.
Leicester LE87 2BB

However this is the tip of an iceberg.

Dear Mr Dog went into hospital, paralysed with brain cancer in July and died in September.
I wrote to Barclays to inform them in October and asking for an account of Mr Dog’s investments with Barclays. There has only been one person living at Dog’s house for many years, so that should not be too confusing. It is not as though it is a block of flats with 50 “Smiths” in residence.

I did get a reasonable looking reply explaining that Mr Dog had been paid 6 months of monthly income on his nest egg BUT no tax had been deducted from his income (?!?).
However in the previous tax year he had been paid thousands and here is a certificate showing he had paid 30.15 in tax.
On the telephone, initially to India, but later to Cardiff, I managed to establish that the 30.15 was probably the tax deducted by Woolwich (a subsidiary of Barclays) before the Woolwich accounts were consolidated into Barclays in 2007. However it is not possible to see all the payments and tax deducted in early 07/08 on the computer screen.

So by January I had already written two letters to Leicester, asking for clarification and paperwork acceptable to HMR&C. for years 07/08 and 08/death.
To these letters I added a third at the start of Febuary about the ISA, giving them a month to get their act together.

From this thread it is pretty obvious that I am unlikely to get an accurate reply in the next few days to any of my letters.

My tip is “Don’t die with Barclays”.

I have HMR&C breathing down my neck !

DO ANY OF YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE ON MY NEXT MOVE TO GET SENSE OUT OF BARCLAYS

ULTIMATE1

Christ what a mess,but that our good old Barclays for you.
I think the best think you can do is contact The Financial Ombudsmen Service.I would think by now they would be use to dealing with Barclays.

TomsMom

That is so awful for you.

I really don't know what to say that can help, but are you anywhere near the branch where Mr Dog used to do his banking? Can you make an appointment to see the manager/area manager, explain what has happened and show them the correspondence, and hopefully they will endeavour to get this sorted out. Perhaps a face to face meeting might be what's needed to remind them that they are dealing with a real person rather than a name on a piece of paper and that person has enough to deal with without having to try and cope with Barclays ineptitude as well.

John_Pierpoint

Thanks for your thoughts.
My bet is that Mr Dog was inherited by Barclays when they took over Woolwich the former building society.
Then someone over the 'phone sold Mr Dog the concept of taking a monthly income (and met their monthly sales target). As the monthly income varies, I can only assume that the underlying investment is some sort of tracker fund. It certainly seems strange in this day and age to send someone a physical monthly cheque.
We are not talking peanuts here, the monthly cheque was about 400GBP.
Mr Dog was a long standing customer of Lloyds Bank and appears to have managed to pay in his monthly cheque regularly.
Another quirk is that his final payment is dated the day on which Mr Dog died; if nothing else, I need to know if that was paid before or after his death as different people will get it depending on the answer.
(It would be simpler if he is deemed to have got it and paid tax on it, 'cos then I would be able to reclaim at least some of the tax:T)

John

PS Thinks Another Tip - If you are thinking of living death (going bankrupt) or dying, try to set things up so you have two bank accounts; one that accepts incoming payments and another that pays out your living expenses. It makes life easier leaving you, not your bank, in charge of your money.

PPS I've gone through two years of cheque stubs trying to find evidence of Mr Dog making out a (for him) meaty cheque to Barclays for the ISA and drawn a blank - but poor man he had got to the stage of spidery hand writing and I know he had to abandon some cheques and start again because he had made a mistake - so several cheques are seemingly never issued though destroyed. I'll have another go at reconciling his Lloyds account, though that is a nightmare, it is linked to a savings account so every time there is a transaction there are two entries as the excess or deficit automatically slops back and forth with the savings account.
I'll be as mad as hell if it turns out there never was an ISA in the first place.
(When Dog's sister died, she banked with HSBC and they were brilliant: bomp, bomp, bomp whole job done with statements and final certificates in a week to ten days of being notified).