Barclays personal reserve

SparciaM

At the end of the day Barclays should've done an opting in mailing and not an opting out mailing.

My bro got the letter but didn't fully understand it, he thought he was getting an increase to his OD. I told him to opt out due to the charges involved.

I guess if Barclays had sent out an opt in mailing they would make less money.

Yes, they are all businesses but there are ways round certain things. Like with Interflora. A few months back if you bought something via Interflora you were opted into paying £5pm or something to join a rewards club. The only way to opt out or cancel was to wait until you got charged and ring the number next to the transaction. Yes it makes them money and they are a business but it's the wrong way to go about it, as people whom don't like opt in automatically schemes will go elsewhere and tell people.

With the way banking is at the moment, it's hard enough to keep customers.

Yes, if people don't want it they opt out or don't use it. But to just put it on everyones accounts and then send a mailing saying they are doing it etc in my opinion is just wrong and a bad way to run a business, but I don't run Barclays or anything so it doesn't matter.

End of day, if you don't like it, opt out or close account and go elsewhere.

s4ddys

Hi there,

First time post from me as I am too having trouble with Barclays. I currently have an arranged payment to pay back my overdraft (started at £680 at £100 per month now down to £180). I have a reserve limit of £0 but I used to use the £5 (ish) free buffer regularly using my debit card or if I knew I had money due in, then use my card the day before. Logged onto online banking last week and discovered I had £40 worth of £8 charges as Barclays now charged from your 'cleared balance' rather than actual account balance for that day (which also ruled out paying in on the same day).

has anyone else had any problems with this? Is this legal? I have had no correspondence from Barclays regarding charging from your cleared balance.

Please help!

Dan

ShelfStacker_3

It's perfectly legal. The £5 buffer zone was, in any event, never for regular use, mainly to stop people who were only a penny or so overdrawn getting charged.

littleowl

ShelfStacker wrote: »

It's perfectly legal. The £5 buffer zone was, in any event, never for regular use, mainly to stop people who were only a penny or so overdrawn getting charged.

Might I refer you, and Barclays Manager, to Post 9 posted when the charges were first announced in which I said that I believed that this change was an attempt to legitimise bank charges in the wake of the action by people to reclaim previously unfair charges.

By this measure Barclays has ensured that its charges are now seen as 'legitimate' - and, in truth, they are not that far below the exhorbitant costs they used to claim.

I do wish that you as an HSBC cashier, and the Barclays Manager, would stop trying to justify what is a devious method of ensuring that the bank's unfair charging system is somehow right.

Just as a rider I would like to say that I have never been overdrawn and never have had any charge made on my account. What enrages me is the self-righteous posts condemning people who do happen to go a few quid over their balance and are then charged truly immoral fees.

ShelfStacker_3

littleowl wrote: »

I do wish that you as an HSBC cashier, and the Barclays Manager, would stop trying to justify what is a devious method of ensuring that the bank's unfair charging system is somehow right.

Barclays have made their terms and conditions crystal clear with regards to the Personal Reserve, and advertised it widely, and have reduced the charges for guaranteed and bounced payments by about £22. HSBC have a Fair Fees policy, which means that you won't be charged more than you were overdrawn by, and have abolished bounced payment fees entirely.

I fail to see how either of these are unfair. They're only unfair if you expect the bank to let you go overdrawn as much as you like without any recourse on their part, and they're ridiculously easy to avoid.

littleowl

ShelfStacker wrote: »

Barclays have made their terms and conditions crystal clear with regards to the Personal Reserve, and advertised it widely, and have reduced the charges for guaranteed and bounced payments by about £22. HSBC have a Fair Fees policy, which means that you won't be charged more than you were overdrawn by, and have abolished bounced payment fees entirely.

I fail to see how either of these are unfair. They're only unfair if you expect the bank to let you go overdrawn as much as you like without any recourse on their part, and they're ridiculously easy to avoid.

Of course I don't expect any bank to allow free reign for running up overdrafts which are not sanctioned.

Please will you stop being so damned self-righteous and understand that there are people who do NOT understand the convoluted way in which Barclays have effected this changed.

krisskross

littleowl wrote: »

.
Please will you stop being so damned self-righteous and understand that there are people who do NOT understand the convoluted way in which Barclays have effected this changed.

I received the letter from Barclays and chose to opt out of the personal reserve as I didn't feel it would benefit me.

I didn't find the letter difficult to understand and if I had I think I would have wandered into a branch to discuss it with a personal banker.

dmbc

I wanted to add my two cents (or, to be more precise, £8) about the Barclays Reserve to this thread. It’s a long post. Go and make yourself a cuppa. I have.

I am a former Woolwich account holder who found himself automatically becoming a Barclays customer whether he liked it or not when his branch of 20+ years closed. Having recently become unemployed at the time and with three outstanding credit card debts to my name (a fourth settled over a year ago and the other three lenders have generally been patient and supportive), the options to change banks were limited, so I chose to stay put until things settled.

When I first received the letter detailing the plans for the Barclays Reserve this summer, I chose not to opt out because there was a chance of obtaining some freelance work in the short-term and I thought it might be a handy cushion. I also thought the method of charging was a touch fairer than it had been previously - and a far better option than charging fees to everyone with a bank account, regardless of whether their balance is in the black or in the red.

Sure enough, a few weeks back I got two days of moderately well-paid freelance work. However, the down side was that I had to spend some money upfront in order to complete the work - and therefore be paid - as fast as possible.

I was already within my £150 Reserve, on top of the £100 overdraft that came as standard with the current account, and, with that week’s subsistence costs and a direct debit a week away, I knew things were going to be tight - but was willing to absorb some fees if it meant I could then get my account in the black sooner and thereby save more fees being applied to the account. Given my employment status and overall financial standing, I thought it highly unlikely that I would be able to successfully arrange a slightly higher overdraft or Reserve, even for a week or two, so I didn’t even attempt to. I would absorb a couple of fees and / or returned transactions for the greater good of a healthy balance asap, I decided.

Needless to say, although I completed the work in good time, the cheque for payment was late in arriving, and straight away I knew that the damage was going to be greater than hoped. Upon looking at my statement online, most of the charges were correct, but it did look as though I’d been charged for one purchase that should easily have been covered by the Reserve. So I chose to query this.

After two phone calls lasting 75 minutes and one typo-laden letter, all of which cited different reasons for the charges, and having been told twice that I was in the wrong and once that I was in the right, I called the office in Leicester that deals with everyone who’s dissatisfied with the main customer service number.

I was told that by close of business on November 12th, I was £205.22 overdrawn, which included a £22 Personal Reserve Fee levied on that day, which covered me for the next week. This I agreed.

The same day, I had made my unexpected payment to Company A online via debit card for £35.14, although the payment was not requested until the 14th. That payment was made in good faith because I assumed that my total balance would still be within the limit of my Reserve. Not the case, they said.

Because on the 13th, I used the card again to buy groceries from Company B. Yes, I knew that it was going to take me over my Reserve limit, but figured that if I kept the payment as low as possible, the fact that it had been paid for by card should have guaranteed the payment and only result in a fee of £8. Of course, if the bank wasn’t happy, the card should have been rejected at point of purchase. But it wasn’t: the bank accepted the transaction, and so this £18.93 purchase made my balance £259.29 overdrawn. This amount was not debited from the account until the 17th.

This meant that the payment to Company B on the 13th was subject to a fee on the 17th because the payment to Company A had already been authorized on the 12th, and then when the payment to Company A was requested on the 14th, this too became subject to a fee, because the payment to Company B had been authorized on the 13th.

So even though I was was still within my Reserve (for which I had already paid £22 in order to guarantee payments within that amount) after the transaction with Company A, I was charged because Barclays’ policy is such that customers are judged both on when a transaction is made and when the resulting payment is requested of or presented to the bank. This rather smacks of having one’s own cake and eating it, and kind of makes a mockery of the whole point of the Reserve, which is that a customer pays to have payments within a defined amount guaranteed.

Things sadly got even messier after the cheque failed to show up the following week: more return fees were charged, one of which was a token payment of £1 in lieu of my debts - ironically to Barclaycard. I had no complaints about these, for the fees were worth stomaching to ensure that I completed my freelance work and, even though it has dented my profits from the venture somewhat (which, of course, means there will be less to pay my creditors when the month shakes down), I still think it was a better option than delaying the work and annoying the only client I have at present.

I’ve never been in this situation with a bank before, not to mention paid a premium for it, so I told them exactly what I thought of their policy. I was not pleasant, and was told not to swear, which, I’m afraid, is a red rag to a bull with me. So I swore a lot more (“parasitic c***s” was in there somewhere) and told them that I would be closing the account once the cheque I’d paid clears at the end of the week.

This isn’t an issue of the Reserve being mis-sold, although parts of the literature were - and still are - very vaguely written: for example, if you, like me, end up going over your Reserve amount, it suggests that fees kick in but makes no mention of the fact that Reserve fees continue to be charged if you enter a subsequent charging period whilst still outside that Reserve. I thought the whole point of the Reserve from the bank’s point of view was to charge people a fixed fee up front and then be seen to be charging people less as and when they exceeded their Reserve limit, but no.

Barclays are making a considerable sum out of confusing the hell out of loyal customers, changing terms and conditions with alarming regularity, and then hiding behind policy when the excrement hits the air conditioning system. Their statements online and from ATMs often require further investigation and, as highlighted above, what seem on the face of things to be advances in the world of banking have just confused things further.

Why, with debit cards and their respective networks, must customers have to wait days for transactions to appear on their statements? For years, we’ve been sold debit cards as being “as fast as cash”. Well, they’re quite evidently not.

Even when paying in cheques, Barclays (along with several other banks, I’m sure) still insist in the pointlessly antiquated completion of giro slips. And, despite years of promise that faster cheque clearance is on its way, the majority of account holders still have to wait at least four days. Even “express clearance” facilities once on offer on the High Streets no longer guarantee access to funds within 24 hours. It may be the 21st Century for the rest of us, but the banks are stuck in Dickensian times.

Both their online banking service and ATMs are frequently offline during business hours, and, in conjunction with the poor service from their continent-hopping call centres, more people are forced to use counter service, which causes horrendous queues at branches. This in turn forces customers to use self-service facilities that can take branches up to a day longer to administrate. Factor all these into the equation and it’s just not good enough.

They’ve even managed to spend loads of money promoting this Premiership ticket giveaway thing and then failed to stock the ATMs with the relevant paper for the receipts! If that isn’t symptomatic of a rudderless company, then kindly fax me an explanation of what is.

In the end, this mess (for which, I admit, I am partially responsible) means that I will have to open a basic account with a lender some distance away without the flexibility of a small overdraft any more at a time when it might be needed - but, on balance, and having been more than happy to pay appropriate fees to use overdraft and Reserve arrangements for the very applications for which they were created, I’ve decided they just ain’t worth the frickin’ hassle.

So I will just have to take it on the chin, tighten my belt until my intestines explode, turn down work because of the lack of flexibility in my finances, and suffer.

And if there are hundreds of thousands of others in a similar position to myself, this country isn’t going to get itself moving again any time soon.

bluflashlite

I've just returned to this thread & have to say I'm shocked at the continued arrogance offered by those 'advocates' of the banking world, especially in the face of a rather apocalyptic crisis in that specific industry.

At a time when we are all losing our confidence in banking systems, you'd have thought it would be in their own interests to re-engage with us customers, by restoring a little morsel of trust when opportunities like this arise......but no, instead they keep on with the holier-than-thou dictatorial self-righteousness, failing to realise it fundamentally contributes to the public concern & nervousness that can only perpetuate the current economic difficulties!

Little wonder that many of us are beginning to feel that our mattresses might be a considerably safer place to keep our precious funds, however meagre.

So for anyone wondering who the bigger fools are on this thread, I think I pretty-much just summed that up. :rotfl:

littleowl

bluflashlite wrote: »

I've just returned to this thread & have to say I'm shocked at the continued arrogance offered by those 'advocates' of the banking world, especially in the face of a rather apocalyptic crisis in that specific industry.

At a time when we are all losing our confidence in banking systems, you'd have thought it would be in their own interests to re-engage with us customers, by restoring a little morsel of trust when opportunities like this arise......but no, instead they keep on with the holier-than-thou dictatorial self-righteousness, failing to realise it fundamentally contributes to the public concern & nervousness that can only perpetuate the current economic difficulties!

Little wonder that many of us are beginning to feel that our mattresses might be a considerably safer place to keep our precious funds, however meagre.

So for anyone wondering who the bigger fools are on this thread, I think I pretty-much just summed that up. :rotfl:

You have indeed and I fervently agree with you.