Barclays ISA

MoneyPenny_2

I don’t know if this point has been made before because there is so much about dissatisfaction expressed on this site about the opening of this particular product. But a friend opened a Barclays ISA with the full allowance in the last tax year and the acknowledgement says it has actually been started in this, the following, tax year. What should she do?

Megalomaniac

Ring them up and explain she had applied for the ISA for the previous tax year. It will probably say this on her application. I expect with the shear volume of people signing up to the ISA, one or two mistakes are made with the input of data. Barclays have always been good to rectify these problems in my experience.

Hungerdunger

Someone else reported this problem on Money Box on Radio 4 last Saturday. You might like to use the Listen Again facility here where a Barclays Rep gave a cast iron assurance that any ISA application made in the 07-08 tax year would be applied to that tax year or you can read the transcript of the interview here and this is what she said:

LEWIS: And what about people like Philip? He applied in the last tax year - in 07-08. His account was actually not opened until this tax year. What are you doing for people like him?
FRENCH: Any valid ISA application received on or before 5th April will be opened
for the correct tax year even if in fact it was processed in this tax year, so customers absolutely won’t be losing out.

Sealy

Barclays has recently been in the news regarding back dated ISA savings. They were saying that they do not wish to backdate savings collected in an isa from when you first set up the account to when the account actually goes active.

MoneyPenny_2

Thanks to ever body here.
The quote on Moneybox looks optimistic so we shall certainly pursue Barclays about this. The whole point about opening the ISA in branch in March was that it would qualify for the last tax year. She says they didn’t say anything to contradict this at the time.
Lets see what happens.

MoneyPenny_2

Here's the outcome of the approach to Barclays about the problem outlined at the head of this discussion.

We wrote to Barclays twice.

The first letter, to the Head of Savings, didn’t get an answer.

The second letter to the Head of Barclays Banking, quoting Barclays’ Retail Customer Service Director, Catherine French’s comments on Money Box - referred to above - produced three letters in response. Each contained an apology and the outcome was that the ISA opening has been backdated to the last tax year to the day when they took the cheque with the addition of about £12 to the account as backdated interest to the new opening date.