Thread: Reserve Charge just another way to get our hard earned money

My son in law has had his bank account for years. Originally with Woolwich and then Barclays took over. Never really had much problems with them until the Reserve charge appeared.

He decided he did not want this on his account and called them. The guy on the phone said, you have to have it we gave you the option to have it taken off when we put it on. My daughter spoke to him and said he did not want it as it was causing him more problems. The guy told her that they were allowed to leave it on the account by law and that he would not be able to get rid of it.

He went over the reserve amount because instead of bouncing a DD and charging him the one off fee they decided to pay it and thus take him over the reserve amount.

Needless to say it just got worse and the £22 charges every 5 days were just getting ridiculous. Eventually I went into the local branch with him in Sept last year and the chap there said he could not understand why we thought it could not be taken off. So I said okay take it off. He then said ,"Oh we cant do it in the branch you have to ring the telephone banking and they wont cancel it while you are still in the reserve."

I just wanted to SMASH HIS FACE IN. I told my son in law to go and open an account somewhere else which he did. I then wrote a letter to Barclays asking them to close his account cancel all DD's and stop putting any more charges on and he would sort out paying back what he owed. He was told that the account could not be closed while he still owed them money. So in other words ( We are going to screw as much as we can out of you).

I decided to send an SAR in November last year to have a look at all the charges etc that they had put on the account.
By this time the initial amount of £200 had now gone up to £370 and it was still rising.

He never got anything back from barclays on the SAR and in early Feb I wrote another letter to them saying I was still waiting for the SAR and that it was well past the 40 days allowed them.

Received a letter of Termination;





Received letter about SAR:



I replied and told them I wanted all the statements and coms logs and anything else which came under the SAR.

Got a letter about legal action:



Not sure what to do now as I have never worked on bank accounts only card or loans.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Mrs M

I think in the first instance you need to obtain a copy of the terms and conditions and find out if what you were told was incorrect ie that your son couldnt cancel the reserve account.

Then you need to establish if he did indeed receive a copy of those T&cs and if so how easy was it for your Son to understand just what needed to be done if he didnt want it.

Originally Posted by citizenB

I think in the first instance you need to obtain a copy of the terms and conditions and find out if what you were told was incorrect ie that your son couldnt cancel the reserve account.

Then you need to establish if he did indeed receive a copy of those T&cs and if so how easy was it for your Son to understand just what needed to be done if he didnt want it.

Thank you CB. Would sending a CCA request get me the original T&Cs on a bank account?

Mrs M

Thanks Phoenix for the reply.

Barclays are a law unto themselves I might try the sending copies to their legal team as well. What really got my goat was they said they never received the first SAR even though I sent it to their head office.

Mrs M

Have written a letter to their legal dept can someone have a look and advise

Dear Sir or Madam:

Please find enclosed copies of letters that have been sent to your company and received by me from your company over the course of 4 months.

I am disgusted with the way my own bank has treated me.

I tried to cancel the Reserve on my account last year because it was causing me problems and I was told on the phone that I could not because you were allowed to do this and it could not be reversed,
and now because of this my account went up from £200 to £585 and is still rising.

While this has been going on I sent a Subject access request to you and you did not comply within the statutory time of 40+ days.

I could have gone straight to the fos and made a complaint and put the account into dispute but I did not I contacted your Data team and afforded you another 14 days.

I then received a letter from them telling me that as I had not asked for statements and as I was receiving statements through out the years they thought it would be a burden on me receiving all the statements, and then to waste more time I have to request them again.

Who in their right mind keeps 12 years of statements.?

My understanding of a SAR is that I am requesting all data on my account which would include statements.

When my account was with the Woolwich I never had these problems.

This account is now in dispute and when I receive my statements I will be looking at how you have conducted yourselves in the handling of my account and if I find that you have caused me to be in the situation that I am now in then I will seek legal advice.

Thanks Mrs M

Hi MandM,

My understanding of a Subject access request is that I am requesting all data on my account which would include statements.

A SAR is a request for data which an institution holds about you. How they supply the data is up to them but it doesn't HAVE to be in the form of statements, as long as it is understandable.

Thanks Phoenix and Slick
Will send the letter and hope they will send something back I can decipher. Will let you know what happens.

Mrs M

Have just received this little gem from Barclays in reply to the letter I sent complaining about the fact they never complied with the SAR. Yet again they do their we are sorry but, we are still going to keep charging you.





I was about to send this letter to them before this turned up.
************************* ************

Re your letter dated 22/2/10.

I am enclosing copy of letter sent to your Data Dept.

As you will see I requested my Data in November 2009.

I did not receive this and subsequently wrote another letter. I am still waiting for this data to arrive and until it does as far as I am concerned this account is in dispute.

I would be obliged if you would cease all collection activities on this account until my request is met.

I would further remind you that if this continues I will make a formal complaint to the fos.
************************* ***********************
Does this sound alright should I add anything else.
Do I also mention something about the charges they are still putting on the account.

Mrs M

You could ask that they stop adding charges until they have repied to you as necessary.

Whether they take a blind bit of notice is another matter.

Thank you Slick

Have had a pile of stuff from Barclays will trawl through them later.

Not sure about the covering letter below



I was under the impression that if you sent the SAR to the holding company ie Churchill Place then they would have to supply you with all the data including the Barclaycard account.

Mrs M

Looks like their letter invites you to confirm if you require add'l info, so you should reply accordingly.

Thanks slick.
Should I ask them to include the agreement for the Reserve Charge or should I just CCA them for that and give them the £1.00.

Mrs M

Just gone through the statements and noticed that when the reserve was first put on they used to show it being on the account the next day. Then they started to put it on all in one go towards the end of the month. Some of these were £44/£66 & at one point £88. As he was paid weekly at his job by the time the end of the month came the charge just put him back into the reserve again.

As I mentioned in my first post he called them when a charge of £44 came out and told them he did not want the reserve and it would be better from him if they could up his overdraft by £50. Most of the time he only went over his personal o/draft by £25 and as he was paid weekly it would normally only be for a day or so.

They man on the phone told him they did not have to take the reserve off and by law they were allowed to put it on without asking him first. He also told him that they would not extend his overdraft as he did not meet with the banks criteria. So inevitably as you know it just got worse.

On looking through the rest of the data. They have sent a coms log it consists of 3 calls nothing about the calls he has made no mention of what was said in these calls just their usual jargon that only they can understand.

I am not sure now what sort of a letter I am going to write to them and would appreciate any help.

Mrs M

Looked again at the coms log and it only goes back to Aug 09. Have put up the covering letter attached to the log.



When I have had coms logs from other companies you can see exactly what was said between both parties not sure how to get them to give us the transcripts of the calls.

Mrs M

If you want call transcripts, ask for them.

Re the Reserve Fee, Barclays are maybe within their rights saying you cannot opt out of the RF system when you are using the Reserve buffer.

If you want to opt out, this should be done in writing but maybe when the a/c is not in the Reserve buffer.

Thanks Slick.
He tried to get rid of the Reserve when his account was in credit and was told he could not opt out because they had the right to put it on.

If and when he did go over his overdraft then it would only be for a couple of days so the charge would only have been a standard fee of £12 not £22.

Our argument is that if they had increased his overdraft as he had asked when the account was in credit then he would not have gone into the reserve.

It wasn't as if he had asked them to raise it by hundreds it was only £50.

My feeling was that they stood to make more money out of him by making him stay on the reserve.

If it is your bank then you expect them to stick to their contract with you and give you what you need from an account to stop you getting into future difficulties.

Mrs M

Originally Posted by MandM

Thanks Slick.
He tried to get rid of the Reserve when his account was in credit and was told he could not opt out because they had the right to put it on. If he was told this, I think the bank was wrong but unless the request, and their refusal were in writing, you'd have trouble proving this now.

If and when he did go over his overdraft then it would only be for a couple of days so the charge would only have been a standard fee of £12 not £22.

Our argument is that if they had increased his overdraft as he had asked when the account was in credit then he would not have gone into the reserve. Providing or increasing an o/d is the bank's prerogative.

It wasn't as if he had asked them to raise it by hundreds it was only £50.

My feeling was that they stood to make more money out of him by making him stay on the reserve.

If it is your bank then you expect them to stick to their contract with you and give you what you need from an account to stop you getting into future difficulties. Maybe years ago but not now.

Mrs M

Sadly now, the only way to get away from their spiralling Reserve Fee trap is to open an a/c elsewhere if poss.

Thanks Slick
He opened a new acc elsewhere last year after he was told that he could not have the Reserve taken off until he had paid all the charges back. He wrote and told them to close his account and let him know how much he owed and he would make arrangements to pay it off. They refused to close the account until the charges were paid, and obviously they were and are, still putting on more charges. So where do we go from here. I will send the letter about the call transcript as I am hoping they will have the original call that he made. I think I may still send the letter in post 6 to their Legal Dept with a little more added to it.

Mrs M