Barclaycard "retaliatory action" anyone else had this??

[motown_ben]

So far I thought things were going well with my claim against Barclaycard. I had sent off the standard letters and they had offered a partial refund against my approx £1000 unlawfal charges of £400. This £400 was swiftly credited to my card wiping out my balance (my limit was only £500), which I thought was pretty good......

However when i rang their customer line today to check my balance I was told that my credit linit had been halved as they had "reviewed my account and as responsible lenders thought that my limit was too high". I asked if this had anything to do with my recent claim and they said it was only due to recent concerns over the nationwide level of debt and nothing to do with my claim.

Also when I got home from work I found the following letter from Barclaycard

Dear Mr ~~~~~~

We are reducing your credit limit
As a responsible lender we conduct regular reviews of our customers accounts. Having recently reviews your account we have decided to reduce your credit limit to £260 and this change will have effect from 1 November 2006. We reach our decision based on customer profiling taking into account all available financial information. This does not just include barclaycard but also that provided by credit refernce agencies.

Your UK cash facility has also been withdrawn
In addition to reducing your credit limit we have also withdrawn your uk cash facility and this will not be available to you for a minimum of 6 months. Although you are no longer eligible to withdraw cash in the UK you may be able to withdraw cash outside the UK

How to manage your account
We will regually review your account in the future but cannot guarentee that you will receive an increase in your credit limit. To help you manage your account we have listed below the some helpful hints.......

Blah Blah Blah

Anyway can anyone offer any suggestions as to a reply to this letter please? To me it stinks of petty retaliation based on my on-going claim and makes me all the more determined to fight all the harder. Half of me is thinking about phoning them and simply cancelling my account. The other half thinks I should wait until I have the remainder of the money they owe me.

Any advise would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Motown.

I wonder whether you have any right to demand to see all the financial information they relied upon when reviewing your account? It seems that you should be able to, if I find anything I'll give you a shout

They said the same to me today but then realised my accont was closed last year. Right bunch of wal****

this may be if use, and if you want to see the Data Protection Act s.7 it is in the library

Is information held about you?

If you want to know whether information is held about you and if so what it is, you will need to write to the person or organisation you believe holds the information. This is known as a 'subject access request'.
You can ask for a copy of all the information held about you to which the Act applies. If you are not sure who to write to within an organisation address your letter to the 'Company Secretary'.
Here is an example of a letter which you could use:

Dear Sir or Madam
Please send me the information which I am entitled to under the Section 7(1) of the Data Protection Act 1998.
If you need further information from me, or a fee, please let me know as soon as possible.
If you do not normally handle these requests for your organisation, please pass this letter to your Data protection officer or another appropriate official.
Yours faithfully

good luck

	Subject Access Request A Subject Access Request is a demand which you can make to any organisation to disclose any personal information which they hold on you. The right to disclosure of data is provided by the Data Protection Act. There is no time limit. The organisation is obliged to reveal everything they have about you - which you ask for - as far back as you ask for. There are very few exceptions. It does not matter whether the data is held on microfiche, in an archive, on tape, in a cardex system, in sound recordings or in screen notes. Some companies are saying that they do not have to disclose where it would be difficult to do so - "disproportionate effort". This is untrue. Disproportionate effort refers to something else under the Act. If you are seeking bank charges information then you should ask for "all data held on you" and you should make it clear that you want everything as far back as it goes. Do not be put off by excuses. Do not accept being fobbed off. It is not in your bank's interest to make full disclosure to you. This means that it is in your interests to get it. If you have not started gathering your bank charges information yet, then you should start now. There will soon be a big rush once the OFT test case has been settled. Get all of your bank account informtion as far back as possible. At least as far back as 1995. If your bank says that they don't keep data as far back as this, don't accept it. Be persistent. They've got what you need in some form or other.

Originally Posted by HUSBANDKHAN

They said the same to me today but then realised my accont was closed last year. Right bunch of wal****

HK why would they be reducing your credit limit if you don't have one?

You tell me!

[gizmo111]

I haven't had this with Barclaycard but NatWest closed my account 5 days after I issued claim against bank.

[motown_ben]

thanks everyone for your tips and info on this, i havnt yet decided what to do but as soon as I have the rest of the money they owe me i wil be closing the account and sending them a v p!ssed off letter telling them just what i think of them.

i wouldnt mind if they decided to reduce my limit based on it being v high or that i was struggling with payments but thats not the case. My limit was only £500 and i hadnt ****ed a payment in well over a year. It stinks of cheap shots from them. They are scum.

[andymad]

They did the same to me, reducing the Creidt Limit by £50 to £600 this month. I got £216 paid back by them out of £540 so I issued proceedings for the rest. Case goes to trial in Torbay on 6th Dec - if they don't pay but at the last minute!

[motown_ben]

Good luck andymad, pls keep me posted (maybe via a pm if poss) on the outcome with Barclaycard, i will be issuing through money claim in the next few weeks and an idea of how far they puch it would be helpful.