I returned my partner's account to zero early last year.

Unfortunately there was a pending charge, and my partner didn't use her account or check the balance again until late last year.

It had ballooned into a large amount of overdraft from that one pending charge.

Barclays were unwilling to generously be sensible about it, and my partner wouldn't accept the terms of my offer of help,

which was that I'd return it to zero (for the nth time) if she closes her account, as Barclays don't deserve our blood to suck on, and she doesn't need a spare account.

Since then I imagine it's continued to balloon.

I imagine DCAs and court action have happened or will happen soon.

My options are:

1) Cave in and pay.

2) Refuse to cave in. Tell her to point out she has no income of her own, and they should accept the one charge with say a staggering 100% annual APR added, which is still a lot less than they want but they're still accepting something that sounds eye watering.

I have no idea about implications to credit ratings, so I think that will influence the decision.

Thank you very much for any advice.

what was the charge for and how much are we talking about now?

If you don't give us proper detail, there isn't much we can do to help you?

What kind of account?

Hi BankFodder, thanks for the reply.

It's a current account. It was £20 of pending charges which kicked all this off. I believe there is a weekly charge for using the overdraft, and there's a high interest rate. I'm not sure if it's arranged or unarranged, but it was £200 when I had the discussion with her about me returning it to zero about 5 months ago. I dread to think what it is now if DCAs etc are involved. Obviously it's a bit difficult for me to really get precise details because it's not my account.

I'm mainly worried about implications due to credit ratings. Also money is tight at the moment, and I can't keep bailing my partner out when she ignores things.

Have you checked her Credit Reference Files to see if they have defaulted her ?

Andy

We need to know :-

1. If YP is actually willing to challenge the bank charges with your and our help.

2. The amount the a/c is o/drawn now per her latest statement.

3. What the banks' collection tactics have been so far.

Thanks for the replies.

I'm trying to establish whether she wants help.

I've been told to either cough up the money or leave.

I think she's being a bit hotheaded and will calm down,

meanwhile I've told her to find out from Barclays exactly what's going on,

get print-outs of account transactions,

and check her credit file, and the sooner she does all this the better.

Ok, let us know ..................

" I've been told to either cough up the money or leave. "

By the Bank or your Partner.....not very apt on Valentines day

Hi again,

It turned out that it was a pending charge after the account had been returned to a small but positive number which took the account negative again.

About a week after this happened, the bank reduced the arranged overdraft to £10.

They have no record of sending a letter to tell her this,

and she is pretty sure she never got one,

as it would have caused action to sort it out on her part while it was still tiny.

My partner spoke to the bank and this had all since ballooned to £800.

This time though (going to a different branch must have helped)

they looked into it, and kindly reduced it to £215, as a gesture of goodwill.

So this is over the £200

it was when I offered to sort it out on condition she closed the account because

1) she doesn't need it

2) can't look after it and

3) I'm not prepared to have our blood sucked by them.

She still won't close the account, because she thinks they're being nice about it.

This works out at roughly 1000% APR on the original £20 of pending charges.

Furthermore,

we'd moved and she hadn't updated the address until this trip to the branch.

Two strange things happened,

a wage slip envelope came through the post to the new house with her name on it,

and inside it asked her to phone a number.

It could only have been related to Barclays.

Second, when she went to the branch her address was already the correct new one.

She hadn't changed it and the bank don't know how this happened.

P.S. They've given us until the close of play tomorrow to pay it off!

If DCA's have been involved, I expect they may be responsible for the payslip and request to call a certain phone number. Have you checked online to see who was behind the phone number they gave.

About the bank changing her address without YP giving the new one, I have no answer for this. The only way to find answers is to send a SAR to the bank with the £10 fee.

But, if YP thinks the bank is being nice to her, she may not want to do this. Difficult to think how she came to this conclusion, seeing as the bank has stitched her up like a kipper.

The payslip envelope is from Wescot Credit Services trading as "2F". It's in a helpful Q&A format. One of the questions is "what is this about?" and its answer is mysteriously nothing but a very large integer.

Barclays say this hasn't affected her credit record... yet.

As for stitching her up like a kipper. Putting someone's arranged overdraft down to £10 is essentially saying they don't want to offer someone credit anymore. That's fine (I refer you to points 1 and 2 above), but they don't appear to have acted on that conclusion in good faith. No serious attempt to contact her and putting the overdraft at £10 seems to be a cynical attempt to get someone into more difficulty. At that point, the bank is saying they don't care about your continued custom, it's just about extracting what they can from you. And she still wants the account.......