Barclays personal reserve

Natan358

lynwestie wrote: »

I am furious with barclays and I have just discovered a sting in the tail to refusing the reserve.

We have banked with barclays for over 30 years and other than a couple of unnoticed occasions stayed within our agreed overdraft limit . On the couple of occasions we have gone a few pounds over an apologtic phone call to barclays has always removed the fee:T .

So like many others I saw this reserve as a way of us giving barclays authority to make this charge if we accidently went £1 over our agreed limit . I promptly opted out on our 3 acounts deciding that if there was another such occasion and charge a phone call would get it removed.

last week I paid in a cheque for £3000 and as have done many many times over the years wrote out a cheque for £663 to pay my tesco credit card bill at the same time . Barclays bounced the cheque because the funds were "uncleared" . Never in our lives have they ever bounced one of our cheques against uncleared funds.

Phoned them in disgust last night and dispite them knowing there was a £3000 cheque paid into our account kepping us well within our overdraft limit but "uncleared"was told that as we have opted out of the reserve cheques will no longer be honoured . If we had of had this reserve we would still have incured the £22 fee which we didnt incur because they bounced the cheque and charged us £8 .

so please be warned that you will incur this £22 against all payments made from uncleared funds as well if it takes you over your agreed overdraft limit.:mad: and that there has clearly been a change of policy in terms of such transactions made from your account. cheques will no longer be honoured in these circumstances if you opt out and so wont only effect those going over their overdraft limit . We have incurred a fee of £8 and have the embarrasement of a bounced cheque for the first time in our lives .Tesco will no doubt charge us a hefty fee too

Rant over
lyn

there are 5 days in which a cheque takes to clear, if someone gave you a cheque and you spent the money and then the cheque bounced on the 5th day what would happen? you would be liable for the money, maybe barclays used to allow this but it makes sense not to allow money from uncleared funds, ask about the aul limit, sometimes you are allowed up to 1000 pounds of the uncleared funds from a cheque which the tesco payment would be made from to prevent this happening again, but the aul limit is automatically added to your account, you cant demand or ask to have it added to your account

lynwestie

maybe barclays used to allow this but it makes sense not to allow money from uncleared funds, ask about the aul limit, sometimes you are allowed up to 1000 pounds of the uncleared funds

precisely Natan, this has been Barclays policy for a number of years yet in my phone call to them the other evening the very nice lady in the indian call centre didnt get it and I cant find anything in their bumf on the reserve to say that this facility has now been taken away. I have always done this and never had a problem .

Im going to give them another call and ask specifically about whether that facililty has now been removed.

Or it may be that barclays previously set its own " unknown to the customer reserve " on our account which I know they used to do in the good old days .Is this the Aul limit Natan?? .unfortunately looks like now we have stuck our 2 fingers up to the reserve letter it would appear we are out on our own with this and that customer relations and 30 years good banking counts for nowt .

In all the many years I have done exactly the same each month never ever have they bounced a cheque or even made a charge to our account against an uncleared cheque

Natan358

the aul limit is either on your account or not, theres not an actual limit its either the first 1000 pounds of your cheque you can use or you just wont be allowed to, i havent been informed that this limit has been taken off for any customers, but definetely never use the funds unless you phone and ask whether it is available once you have deposited the cheque, but yea loyalty is bullcrap, unless you have a business account then its slightly different for loyalty.

pasti

You're all probably going to lynch me now, but I though it was was time that someone who's been dealing with this change explain it for all of you on here. Hopefully you will understand a few things about the way this works.

Personal Reserve - Previously when you went over your overdraft limit you would not know up to what point that Barclays would pay out up till any you would b charged a paid refferal charge plus 27.9% unauthorised interest. Now with the Personal Reserve you know exactly what you have available to spend up to before your account then stops working and rejecting payments.
The reserve is a good idea as it allows you leeway on your account in case of EMERGENCY.
This also allows you to return funds to your account that working and allow payments to leave your account without charge that working day!!!!
If by close of business that working day you are still over the limit the fee of £22 is then applied the next working day.
This allows the account to remain in the reserve for a total of 5 working days, so weekends and Bank holidays don't count.
You have until close of business on the 6th working day to return your account into within its limits.
There is NO other charges for making transactions whilst in the limit and NO interest is charged!
If you opt out - The decision on whether to pay an item is based on your AVAILABLE balance at 00:30 of that working day, so any wages will be taken into account. We cannot reverse any decisions already made after this point even cheques.
Availabe balance includes card authorisations and ATM transactions made after cut off time that are on your account.
Basically in this situation you must ensure funds are available by close of business the working day before.
Any cheques to be returned will not show until they have been removed from clearing which could be later the same day.

I must also point out that Barclays will not refund any of these fees unless it is either Bank error or fraud so there is no point in asking for a manager to refund these as this will not happen.

Cheques - If you pay a cheque in most accounts will have the uncleared limit of £1000 on them, however this is at bank discression and can be removed at any time, because if a cheque is returned unpaid you are liable for the funds.
Some more advise, please do not write out a cheque based on on that you have paid in until it has been fully cleared. I recommend 7 working days as this is the point that they cannot be returned unpaid after.

I hope this clears up some of the questions.

pasti

By the way the reserve is charged against your statement balance so in the case of the £3000 cheque you would not have incurred the reserve fee, but the funds will still have been available to use upto that limit. I hope that clears that up. This is the other reason why it is a good idea.

lynwestie

Thank you very much Natan and pasti for your detailed replies . I now understand fully to enable me to make the relevant queries with the bank.
Yes we do have a business account Natan as well as 2 personal accounts.

By the way the reserve is charged against your statement balance so in the case of the £3000 cheque you would not have incurred the reserve fee, but the funds will still have been available to use upto that limit. I hope that clears that up. This is the other reason why it is a good idea

.

Very interesting Thats one thing I wasnt aware of but obviously I still need to clarify with them why this £1000 uncleared limit was not applied when it quite obviously has for donkeys years .

so basically if we accept the reserve as long as we carry on the way we are by not going over our agreed overdraft we shouldnt incur any fees against uncleared funds . The lady I spoke to the other evening played thick when I questioned her about this £1000 limit . I knew I wasnt dreaming . thanks for clarifying that pasti

tiptoe_mouse

You may like to print out this webpage to quote to Barclays.

http://barclays.metafaq.com/templates/barclays/main/answerPage?_mftvst:answerRef=%24http%3a%2f%2fapi.transversal.com%2fmfapi%2fobjectref%2fEntryStore%2fEntry%2fhttp%3a%2f%2fwww.metafaq.com%2fmfapi%2fMetafaq%2fClients%2fbarclays%2fModules%2fday2day_banking%3a7606%3a12&_mftvst:moduleID=%24day2day_banking&_mftvst:topicID=%24&id=RADN1U6PSDETPQ3D3BVJIA4DLU

It supports the idea that (depending on which account you have) you're entitled to draw up to £1000 against uncleared funds. It does say it's subject to status and limits, but I think it's reasonable to expect that they wouldn't change the way they treat your account without informing you.

I used to work in Barclays returning unpaid cheques. I didn't get to make the decisions, I just did the admin (which, incidentally, was quite involved and time consuming). I did have to bounce many cheques for being drawn against uncleared funds (UC) but we were told not to charge the customer in these cases. Other cheques that bounced for lack of funds were printed with (RD) or (RDPR) (Return to Drawer and Return to Drawer Please Represent) and were charged.

Unfortunately I can't confirm whether this has changed - I left the job for a far more rewarding one in the public sector that didn't involve levying punitive charges on struggling customers.

HTH

tiptoe

lynwestie

Thank you very much tiptoe I have printed that off . Ive decided it may be better to go into my local branch and see the personal banker . At least I know them there and may get some more honest answers than we appear to have got over the phone .

lynwestie

Oh dear how embarrassing . Decided I would phone barclays after all to demand what has happened to our AUL limit etc since we decided to opt out of the reserve. spoke to a lovely lady who knew exactly what I meant .off she went to check and the short and long of it is I cant add up :embarasse :embarasse .I had completely forgotton about a transfer of £375 I made to our other account , so that and the cheque for £663 took us over the £1000 limit which yes we did have on our account :rolleyes: .

she was at least very impressed with my AUL limit talk
so a big apology to Barclays and I am off to crawl under a stone

srhgreco

I got an extra £150 thought this was good as first but wish id opted out because now ive gone into it its hard to get out when they keep putting £22 fees onto it, I am making payments on my account when theres money in and sometimes its taking barclays upto 5 days to take the money out they are then charging me £8.00, they can charge you up to £40 a day for guranteed transaction fees, so how they think they are helping people I dont know at least the old charges were only upto £90 per month, when I ring the bank to say I have money at the time of payment they said its down to the company I pay when they take the money and not down to barclays, how is this when I pay by debit card through a machine that connects to the bank? Then today they took a direct debit out my account then returned it unpaid even though my balance shows I have enough money, again no one helped me with this and just fobbed me off with aload of rubbish.