Barclaycard Lifetime Ban

Rovato1 wrote: »

Hello

I held a Barclaycard which defaulted over seven years ago and the outstanding amount was £411.

This is now disappeared from my Credit File and I have applied for a new card after been notified I had a 95% chance of been accepted for a new card.

Barclaycard have just advised they hold onto past information even thou my credit file is in very good standing, the Applications Manager advised if you have ever defaulted in the past should it be 20 years ago you will never get another credit card.

In a nutshell, ever default with a Barclays Credit Card you then get a lifetime ban !

Has anyone heard of this as it was news to me.

Regards
Brian

I wouldn't lend you money if you still owed me £411.

You still owe the money. They can't take action against you in court but if you die they do have a claim on your estate if you have anything to leave.

If you want the amount to be written off you need to declare yourself bankrupt or take out a DRO. The account will then be closed and in 6 years you can apply to them again.

Essentially what Barclays are doing here is blacklisting someone for life. If it ever went to court I'm sure this would not stand up.

Do you really think a judge would say 'Barclays are acting unlawfully in not extending a credit facility to someone who defaulted on a payment and still has an amount outstanding, although the default is historical'?

GingerBob wrote: »

You may be right, given the outstanding debt. However it would be statue barred. The potential "unlawfulness" is about data retention, or more to the point, basing a business decision on data that's prehistoric, not about the refusal to offer a credit facility. Extend the time period to say, 50 years, and see how that looks.

Take your point, but it's purely a business decision really. Some businesses will take a view that, on an assessment of risk, a customer may be worth another go. Others may take the view that 'fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice....' Both are fair enough commercial decisions, I think.

As mentioned upthread, Amex have a similar policy. I believe First Direct does too. Default on an account and that's it. Never again. So I'd argue that it's completely reasonable to store that data for 50 years, as it's the only way to be able to make that decision stick.

It may be that, in terms of Data Protection legislation,, they may only store name, date of birth and known addresses at the time the business relationship ended. Account conduct etc may be destroyed after x number of years. But it's perfectly reasonable for any business to build and hold a 'stop list' for as long as they like, surely?

My point is not about the debt, settled or otherwise, it's about retention of data for an inordinate amount of time.

GingerBob, is your issue with the company having a blacklist full stop?

Self-evidently, you can't have a blacklist without storing data.... (which is a perfectly acceptable reason under the data protection principles, so long as only data relevant to the management of the blacklist is stored).