Complaint ref: 100bkctc
Account reference: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Settlement payment paid 12/12/09)
Saturday 12th December 2009
To Whom it May Concern:
I am writing to complain regarding an on going complaint I have had with your bank.
I opened a Career Development Loan with you in August 2008 and started my repayments via a standing order that had been set up with my bank, Natwest, on 7th August 2009. However, two months after this date I received a letter from your debt collection department claiming I was in arrears. I immediately called your Career Development Loan department to explain that two instalments of £181 had left my account on 7th August and 7th September and I had checked with my bank that there had been no problems with those payments.
Numerous phone calls at great expense to myself, followed, with no progress being made. Your bank continued to treat me as a customer who was in arrears and refused to offer me any advice on how to deal with the situation. It was not until I called Natwest’s customer service department that I was told the correct procedure was to request traces on the payment from both banks. I informed both Natwest and Barclays bank of this: Natwest obligingly traced the payments and Barclay’s refused to trace the payments until Natwest had completed their investigation, I was told in a phone call.
Natwest’s customer service department, also helpfully suggested I check with Barclay’s bank that the account reference that they had received from Barclay’s when setting up the standing order was correct. It was not, so Natwest amended my standing order and you received all subsequent payments from 7th October 2009.
Then Natwest, having completed their investigation, tried to get in contact with Barclays to inform them they could assist with their investigation to trace the missing payments, now they had identified the problem which had affected my standing order. However, several weeks after they had first attempted to contact Barclays I was contacted by Natwest saying that you had failed to get back to them following numerous phone calls and letters regarding the situation. I contacted Barclays to question why calls and letters had not been acknowledged, and was told that your bank would not discuss individual cases on the phone with other banks, even regarding missing payment investigations, and that letters needed to be addressed to Barclays missing payments department to receive acknowledgement.
It was at this stage I decided to lodge a formal complaint with your customer relations department. It is simply unacceptable to behave uncompromisingly uncooperatively with both your customers and other banks who have already spent, by this point, two months trying to resolve a problem. Particularly a problem related to your bank loosing £362 of a customer’s money. This situation was caused through absolutely not fault of my own.
However, I have not yet received a response from your complaint department regarding complaint reference 100bkctc.
Natwest then sent their third letter to your missing payments department and my account was accredited on the 18th October 2009, nearly three months after the dispute originally started.
Since then I have reached a settlement figure with your bank, and paid this by cheque into one of your branches on 12th December 2009.
However, I do not feel that this dispute is resolved. At no stage have I received any form of apology or compensation from your bank. I am therefore requesting information regarding the amount of interest added to my account between 7th August and 18th October, and for you to reimburse me this amount, as it is an expense your incompetent customer service has incurred.
In the course of these proceedings I have been required to take two full days of work to attempt to resolve this situation, therefore I am also requesting you reimburse me £xxx to cover 16 hours of lost earnings at £xx.xx an hour.
If you do not respond to this letter of complaint in the next 28 days, I will be forced to pursue legal action against you in the small claims court and contact the financial ombudsman in an attempt to resolve this complaint.
Yours truly,
Hannah Flynn
They are utterly unbelievable. I am about to start a complaints procedure with them, I applied in august for my CDL and am still waiting with over £70 of calls to them and their completely incompetent service. If anyone one reads this and might think of applying for a CDL. go co-op, i’ve no idea what they’re like but they cant possibley be worse than barclays. They have no contact centre in the UK whatsoever and the only place you can call is not allowed to phone you. Now i am in a situation of not even being able to buy a ticket to go home for christmas, or buy any christmas presents let alone food or rent. totally ruined my year so far and obliterated christmas.
Hi Jo… I am in the exact same situation as you. I applied for my CDL in July and after two months of sending documents I was accepted and that i would receive my money in September. 21st September came – no money. I was told there was a backlog and that i would receive my money in 20 -2 5 days. 4 weeks later… no money. I was told it’ll be two more weeks. two weeks later… no money. I was then told it’ll DEFINITELY be in my account in one week and you’ve guessed it… no money. I asked for the manager who said my loan application had expired… in October and that i had to reapply. I have since gone through hell and back to get my documents and ID back to them only to be told yesterday that my loan had be… REFUSED!
Luckily my landlord is involved with the financial industry and has contacts with the head of Barclays so this is going straight to the top.
My advice is complain, complain, complain. Don’t take their excuses. They are in the wrong and you need someone with an authoritative sounding voice to put pressure on them. Speak to the manager. If you’re not happy tell them to put you through to someone senior. Ask to be put through to the head of Barclays. Just keep on at them. Don’t get off the phone until it is sorted. Lodge a complaint with the financial ombudsman service (i have) and get your loan. Hell… threaten to speak to the newspapers (if my loan isn’t sorted soon i am)… just don’t give up!
Good Luck!
Unfortunately Co-op is no better, the have messed me around just as much as Barclays seems to have done with you. Their crowning glory was sending my bank card, pin and cheque book to an address I hadn’t lived at for 3 months despite me telling them not to weekly. What utter jokes they all are.
Easily the worst bank in the UK.In the event of a depositors death they hang on to their money as though it was their own inventing all sorts of rules and regulations to do so.They treat their customers with contempt when they’re alive so I suppose it should be no suprise they still do so when they’re dead.
And i wonder why i closed my account with them years ago!! You’re right about them hanging onto deceased relatives money – blooming liars too – this has been goping on for months – keep changing the rules – have even lied to me on the phone! I will be contacting the ombudsman about them!
i am looking to apply for a CDL till i read this. Although, i will need one this looks increasingly worrying if this is the sort of service i will be getting. Anybody got any tips or help they can advise me on in this particular direction.
I have had nothing but upset with this bank!
I had a career development loan of them last October (2009)… and applied in July (2009). It took forever to get an answer out of them whether I could receive the loan, to the point when I didn’t know if to start my course or not. I wasn’t able to pay my rent or buy food, forced to borrow from others getting myself in more debt!
The Learning Skills council would only support me for 9 months before I had to start repaying my loan, which meant I was doing my exams during the repayment period! Obviously I did not have the money to do this as I was still studying. The whole point in the loan is to help you return to education so that you are better qualified for a better job. The stress of worrying about repaying my loan during my exams did not help… and because of the lack of jobs out there it was very unlikely I would have a job straight after my exams. I still had a 2 month period before I qualify as I had to wait for my exam results.
I applied for a postponement on the repayments 3 months ago… (Straight after my exams finished when I went onto jobseekers allowance) after a week of sending the document they require you and the jobcentre to sign I rang them, and they told me they had not received it. Luckily I had photocopied the document so sent it again. I rang them 2-3 times a week regarding it and I get fobbed off EVERYTIME!!!! “we haven’t received the letter” “still haven’t received the letter, its with our concern team” “ring back in 3 days” “ring back in 5 days” “ring back in 30 minutes” “we cant get onto your account as the postponement department are on to it” “ring back in 30 minutes” again again again I get fobbed off.
Finally yesterday I demanded to speak to a manager, the manager assured me he would look into my situation and call me back later that day or this morning… he has only just phoned me and assured me he is dealing with my postponement and will ring me personally when they have made a decision.
I am furious it has come to this and that I have to go through so much frustration and expensive phone calls to get heard by a manager. I am glad I have finally managed to find someone in the office who seems to be competent but still believe I will end up disappointed as after all this I will probably not be granted the postponement and the arrears department will probably write to me again saying I am now 3 months in arrears.
It is frustrating, because last summer I did put in a formal complaint, in the form of a 1000 word letter. However the only response back was a letter (6 months later) with a half hearted apology, from another department which deals with complaints. It’s the rude, arrogant staff who I want an apology from!!! They just seem to not want to deal with my issue, and tell me to ring back in a few days for whatever reason. The real reason is that someone else can speak to me instead and not them.
What frustrates me the most is that I cannot just walk into a Barclay’s branch and speak to someone face to face, because it is all dealt with by different departments.
My advice, don’t get a career development loan with Barclays!!!!
I wrote a 4 letter A4
Hi Morwenna – yeah its so shitty – mostly they dont have any clue how things run over here – they repeatedly asked me to get my bank statements verified by HSBC. though HSBC wont do it as they stopped signing to verify anything several years ago. i told barclays this and they still ask me!! its moromic – cant blame the call centre crew really – it is the whoever is in charge of training them who should have knowledge of how things work over here.
as to your many calls – i wrote a complaint letter to them about that and they reimbursed the cost of the calls – i suggest you do that.
there should be someone in branch who can deal with the issues or at least be a witness to whats going on its totally unacceptable.
if you get through to a manager its better – things went quite speedy from there. so if your thinking of applying for a CDL – my advice is to apply as soon as possible – months before the course if y ou can. its the only way – and also – if you can eek out a couple of months into your course before they give you the money all the better – you can tell them the start date of your course but if you tell them you want the loan to begin one or two months after then you will have longer before you start paying the loan. i have NO IDEA why the learnign skills council puts these crazy restraints on “support” periods for a course – my course they would support for 12 months but my uni course start and finish dates is 14 months.. so why onearth dont they just support the full length of the course. As you say morwenna – you getting only 9 months – its madness and completely defeats the objective of the loan.
as to applying for a top up loan – i also thought it was ludicrous that they base it on your earnings – i just finish my exams and started my research dissertation and desperately needed the top-up (as i didnt apply for much initially), thouh i was working part-time casually it couldnt support me. but they based whether i got the top-up loan in part on that .. i was even asked what the reason was i wasnt working fulltime… umm… what? duh? cos im studying fulltime so i can get a better job to pay back your loan…. so my advice is to apply for the most amount you can at the beginning when your credit rating is best and dont rely on getting a top-up. even if you dont need all the money you can dump it in a savings account and use it to pay off the loan more quickly when you finish.
goodluck people
Hi everyone,
i have been desperately scouring review forums to see if anyone else is furious with the Barclays CDL department- it seems I am not the only one! I applied last September with the relevant documentation (bank statements etc) and THREE times they sent the same letter back saying that “there are some details missing which I require in order to reach a decision” even though I had done what they asked every time. After that, it was accepted and I sent off my college’s bank details etc and didn’t hear from them, expecting the funds to come directly to the school. Well, they never did and by the time I rang to chase them up, my application had expired so I am having to go through the whole bloody thing again- and it’s the same thing this time- every time I send my bank statements they find a different problem with them! The last one is that I didn’t have “the correct stamp verification” on them and now they’re telling me i need to put two different stamps on them, one with the certification from my local branch and the other with the branch’s sort code. Despite having sent statements with both of these stamps on them in separate batches, it is apparently insufficient because they need to be on the same one. Has anyone else had to send their statements so many times???!! I have found their service absolutely appalling- everyone says different things and no one knows what the hell is going on. My theory is that they make it so difficult to take out a loan that you eventually give up! And the worst thing is that my application was accepted in November the first time round, so why can’t they just make a decision based on that???? I am furious and hadn’t even thought about formally complaining, but now that i know other people are suffering too I just might. I would ideally like to speak to bloody Helen C Schofield who signs all the bloody letters, but of course, in true Barclays fashion, she is seemingly untraceable……!
Hi,
Did barclays say what the time limit was before the application expires? It’s 3 months on and they are still messing around. Although last update from them was everything was going through and to ring back next week…
Just getting a bit nervous now that they’re going to turn round and say its expired now!
If it does then im straight on the phone to BBC Watchdog !
Thanks,
Fraser
Hi,
I can also backup the fact that the Barclays CDL team are completely useless. I think the major problem is that the people you are talking to the other side of the world have absolutely no understanding about how things work over here.
Having been told my course would only be supported for 12 months because the Young Peoples Learning Agency said so.. I got in touch with the YPLA (who were really helpful). Said I just needed a letter from my uni stating my actual course dates (amounting to 15months). So letter obtained.. I sent it all off to barclays with a cover letter explaining what I had been told. I then had to follow up with another phone call to Barclays explaining that they need to send the letter to the YPLA who would then authorise it. A few more phone calls in between and still no update..
Then today I finally get a response from Barclays… “Yes Sir,.. we have a reply from YPLA… you will need to send a letter to us from your learning provider stating your course dates.. ” :-s
After 10 mins of arguing on the phone and insisting they already have that letter.. I was left with the only option of “You need to obtain a letter from your learning agency and then we can progress your loan !!!”
So, second letter will be on its way shortly and a follow up complaint to Barclays… Sort it out! I just need some money for my Masters.. not a load of extra stress to go with it!!
Hi everyone,
Made an application to a carrer and development loan back in february, within days got a letter saying that I could only apply 3 months prior the course starts, since my course had started in january, i called them straigh away. The customer service adviser was friendly and entered the right data into their system, since whoever did that job before , did it really bad. She then said to wait up to 3 months for the application to be considered. 3 months gone and had not heard from them, then decided to call them just to be told that my application had expired. I questioned the cutomer service advicer of how such a thing could happen, she said that when making an application you have to keep calling them until a decision is made. Thats ridiculous, at the end of the day I’m a customer and surelly they should have at least sent me a letter to let me know about the progression of my application, they had my correct contact details, however the customer advicer could not explain why I was not contacted. My advice never deal with them again, THEY ARE USELESS.
Thanks
Fabio