Barclays Tax Haven ISA - OOOH MAD

FBThree

What slow and shoddy service! I applied for one of these ISA's on-line on 7th April, and (already being a long-term Barclays customer) I have kept my £3600 sitting in my current account earning diddly-squat interest waiting for them to get round to transfer it to the new ISA...........which they finally did today, 6th May according to my on-line account display! One whole month! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: How flippin' poor is that? And at the same time they seem to have set me up another empty ISA as well! Plus of course, their rate has dropped since they advertised it.

I CAN NOT recommend this ISA to anyone!

I'm waiting to get their written confirmation of the account opening and then am going to try calculate how much I've lost in interest over that month, assuming I was going to hold the ISA for 5 years (until my mortgage ends) and ask for compensation.

Any other good ideas as to how to complain about this?

Jon_Skint_Smith

I had problems last year and again this year. I have not finally got the official line from Barclays re. what they are doing about the delays and the compensation offered for the 08/09 "Haven ISA".

I read numerous users mentioning that they were told that "interest would be back-dated to when the account was opened". This rang a few alarm bells; of course you earn interest from when the account is "OPENED"! This did happen last year (mine took 2 months) but the main difference was that my cheque was CASHED on day one, unlike this year, where they have learnt from their mistakes and are not cashing cheques / drawing funds until the account is opened!!

This year my cash has been sitting idol in my current account earning nowt since 7th April. So, I was determined to establish whether I will be compensated from the DATE OF APPLICATION rather than from the OPENING DATE!

In a nutshell, I managed to frighten the poor lad at the counter to letting me read, (yet not photocopy for evidence!!) THE OFFICIAL FAX MEMO FROM HEAD OFFICE regarding the Haven ISA compensation. In this two page document it "clearly" states (in a long-winded way including worked examples for the mathematically inept) that the opening of an account should take 14 days from receiving the application, hence any delay in excess of this will attract tax free interest at the current rate and as such the account will be deemed open for the sum which was presented on application, whether the cheque / funds had been drawn upon or not. In short, interest will be back-dated less 14 days worth.

To clarify what the actual "date of application received" was, I had it confirmed that this date was the day when the application was signed and handed over to the Barclays staff and not the day it was recovered from the long-term mail store at head office! (I don't know how postal applications will be dealt with)

My question is: why don't Barclays post this information on their site - its called customer service!!!! If anyone on here has got access to this memo, please publish it on the web. To all others, I suggest that you go to your local branch and insist on seeing it. I will try again to get a copy for my records!

Oh, as for the delays and the expected time-frame for sorting out this mess; there was only one date mentioned - any application for 08/09 received before the start of the tax year should be dealt with before May 5th........yeah right!

GOOD LUCK to all!!

FBThree

Oh I hadn't realised other people were having difficulty too. Thanks for this - I will definately visit a branch once they finally send me a letter confirming they've opened my account. BTW they've finally removed the "spurious" account they set up.