Barclay Card Debt

[tim40]

hi , i am pretty new to the forums so hello everyone!

i would like some advice on my wifes barclaycard, i basically want to know wether its enforcable or not, what with the charges etc etc and our current situation i feel it will take about 25 years to repay !!!!

we cantacted them months ago and they agreed a much lower interest rate,which would be reviewed yearly .

the account was opened in approx 2003 but she has had many credit limit increases without asking, not sure if it was opened on line .

on advice given on this forum we applied for a CCA and sent £1 postal order ,we have recieved a standard letter saying that they are dealing with our request ,its coming up to about 12 days +2 and no reply .

the worry at the moment is this months payment is now a few days overdue and we dont know wether to pay, we have been bombarded with phone calls /letters stateing that if payment is not made they will consider reverting back to the original interest rate (no pressure ) .

the account is not in dispute yet so can anyone point me in the direction of a good IN DISPUTE LETTER here on the forum to follow up after the 14 days, and must these all be working days???

we obviously dont want to be defaulting on the account so any advice would be great. i have also suggested to my wife that she closes her barclays current account as we are worried about them OFFSETTING ,is this legal and what are the rules ????? thankyou for reading

[alfwithhair]

The account in dispute letter is here

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/content.php?436-Failiure-to-provide-a-copy-of-the-agreement-within-the-prescribed-timescale.

 

Get your money out of the Barclays account as they can legally (and they will) use the right to offset rule and take any outstanding payments on the Barclaycard from another account if you do not pay by the due date. They do not even have to tell you they are going to do this.

 

Open an account with a bank that has no connection to any of your creditors.

 

Be warned, Barclaycard are relentless with there collection practices. They will instruct MERCERS to harrass the life out of you with phone calls.

 

Never speak to this bunch of parasites, just refuse to answer their security questions and tell them in writing only and put the phone down.

 

They will DEFAULT the account and they WILL mark your credit files, agrement or no agreement

[tim40]

thanks very much for your reply, but do i need to make this overdue payment, ie to give us more time for the 12+2 days? or would you not bother i would rather them break the agreement first by not supplying a CCA because they could turn round and say that we have failed to make minimum payment by the due date and have therefore defaulted,as this account is not yet in dispute, any advice i would be most grateful.

we are in the process of changing accounts and will close barclays, i am at home today and the phone has rung four times ,checked number and its barclays!!!! i have a feeling this is going to get a bit nasty , BRING IT ON !

thankyou in advance for your replys.

[victoria_siempre]

Hi tim

 

It depends on the timescale of you getting your money out of the Barclaycard account (I withdrew mine at £500 cash per day and by electronic transfer). You must do this first or they will rob your account at will.

 

Given that you are challenging charges etc and you have requested a CCA then the only point in making a minimum payment would be to forestall the above robbery.

 

You'll be in dispute with Mercers soon enough. Barclaycard will most likely produce a reconstituted CCA.

 

Hope this helps. The site team will correct if I'm wrong.

 

Best wishes

 

vic

[tim40]

hi thanks for your reply,sorry its taken so long getting back to you, i just wanted to give you an update on my wifes barclaycard , its good to know that there are great people out there only too willing to help !!

anyway we CCA d and got a standard letter back saying that they are dealing with our request,

the 12 +2 working days came and went so we sent our dispute letter special delivery ,which we chased up and we know that they got and have proof of delivery and havent heard anymore which is great. but what is getting us down a bit is the constant bombardment of phone calls ,5 a day on landline and 5 a day on my wifes mobile ,saying hello this is barclaycard can i have your date of birth please , so my wife has refused and has said to them to put everything in writing.

can you tell me the rules if you know, they ring up to 8.45 in the evening and contact my wife at work on her mobile ,one of barclays employees even told my wife THAT THE PHONE CALLS WONT GO AWAY!!!!!!!.

what do you suggest we do? it appears no CCA is forthcoming (1 month on) but surely this is now harassment, what a way to run a financial company

 

HELP

[sam614]

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/content.php?493-Harassment-by-telephone-response-letter

 

send them that recorded delivery

[victoria_siempre]

Hi tim

 

This is based on recent and current experience with Mercers.

 

Barclaycard will send some reconstituted crap that satisfies a sec 78 CCA request.

 

Mercers will continue harassment: there are telecoms solutions to this; I have two lines now and we call one the 'death phone' on which all calls are recorded and logged.

 

Resolvecall will visit, in florescent jacket, to which a possible reply is Foxtrot Oscar (although the guy is unemployed and on commission only).

 

Should they harass your wife on a work number then there is action you can take which appears to make them twitchy.

 

This is a long game and only you can decide how to play it: are you sure that the total that they say you owe is accurate? And so on... read other threads.

 

Best wishes

 

vic

Edited November 26, 2010 by victoria_siempre
typo

[tim40]

thanks vic for your reply,

just an update , the wife recieved her normal monthly barclaycard statement in the post today stating the obvious , she is behind with payment and they have added £12 late payment

charge and £12 total default sum charged this month . another seperate letter came today cancelling the repayment arranged by them months ago ,it also says if immediate payment is not made we will instruct

MERCERS LTD to deliver a default notice with a home visit, how nice !. it seems to me that there customer services are ignoring our letters and burying their heads in the sand ,what would you advise,

perhaps a follow up letter , or would i be wasting my time .

in our ACCOUNT IN DISPUTE LETTER it clearly states no charges can be added while the account is in dispute ,and what about section 10 of the data protection act ie MERCERS, any advice would be great,

getting stressed with the 10 phone calls a day so we think we will send the telephone harrassment letter thanks again for any help you can give TIM

[silverfox1961]

Hi,

Just for clarification, the account in dispute letter is currently being edited to reflect a court judgement last year which allowed creditors to do almost anything while the account is in dispute.

If your credit file is still OK, I would make up the missing payment. Just one default screws up your chances of getting further credit.

 

What I would do is SAR BC and see just how much they have charged in fees which you can then reclaim-with interest.

[nicklea]

tim40

 

What advice you follow depends really on your circumstances.

 

Any advice about stopping making payments assumes that you are already behind on your payments and you are not regularly meeting your minimum payments. If that is the case then, fine stop paying them.

 

However, if you have a relatively good credit rating ie you are managing to make all your monthly payments then please do not stop making payments because of this. It will be reflected on your credit reference files and it will affect your future credit rating. A number of people on this forum have got into a lot of unnecessary bother by following this sort of advice without first seeing if it applies to their own circumstances.

[victoria_siempre]

Hi Tim

 

Mercers are the in-house provisional harassment wing of Barclaycard. Barclaycard are accountable for their actions so complain to them direct (including harassment at work - see other threads). They will raise a level 1 or level 2 complaint and respond with a standard template. then complain to FOS.

 

You will not get any sense out of Mercers, so have to ignore them. get Truecall or some other telecomms defence.

 

Their next move is Calder, in-house legal harassment team part outsourced to India which is where DPA becomes interesting.

 

This is far as my experience goes, so far .

 

love

 

vic

[tim40]

hi all ,thanks very much for your replys, would like to wish you all a very happy xmas !

 

just an update on my wifes barclaycard, 8 weeks on and still no CCA , normal monthly credit card statements, still loads of phone calls despite sending ACCOUNT IN DISPUTE LETTER and HARASMENT BY TELEPHONE LETTER !

we have though received a letter from CABOT FINANCIAL saying that our CABOT account is overdue ,as far as i am aware we have no such account with these toilet bugs, did some digging on line

and from what i can make out they are puppets attached to barclaycard, am i right ?

 

if anyone can give me any information about these slimey creatures i would be grateful, and does this now mean BARCLAYCARD have breached the data protection act by passing my wifes details to a third party ? thankyou

tim

[victoria_siempre]

Hi tim

 

There's of cabot threads here; just do a search.

 

Sadly BC can assign/sell the alleged debt to anyone but you should receive a notice of assignment etc; again read other threads.

 

You will need a telethon blocking device to minimize harassment.

 

x

 

vic

Edited December 17, 2010 by victoria_siempre
typo

[rockwell304]

Hi Tim,

 

BC believe they can do as they like. In my case I had all the calls from BC, Mercers, Calders and Debt Managers, all I believe to be in-house threat monkeys! On the extremely rare occasions I answered the phone I simply said f... off and put the phone down. They all gave up after a while, probably to move on to a more susceptable victim.

 

Moorcroft have it now, enough letters to paper my walls, but nothing of any substance.

[oilyrag]

And sadly it will go on. BC have this inviolable faith that they are above the law and any other regulation that may affect their highly suspect activities at times. In our case they have ignored our solicitors, every communication sent to them or their cohorts and even an injunction. It is a very long game but once you get to the outside hooligans like Moorcroft CSL, Scotcall, resolvecall Matthew Arnold and Baldwin solicitors they do run away after a bit of aggro once any whiff of anything legal coming their way comes on the scene. The comfort is that you sit back and et them spend money, there is NOTHING they can do without going to court and as we have professional legal representation none of them or BC is willing to go to court. In fact they have shot themselves in the foot with invalid default notices s 87(1) (Mercers), dodgy termination on the back of that default (Calders) and Robinson Way breaching just about every controlling regulation of the DPA by sending letters from private addreses in the name of their "branch managers". There is more but I won't bore the group. Its a long game as vic says but we are at stalemate (three years), we don't pay a penny and they won't or risk going to court and gusees what they haven't dared yet to make an entry on our credit file infact all reference to our credit cards has been removed altogether and we had cards for a very long time.

 

regards

oilyrag.

[debbbbsy]

Barclaycard will pass this around every ****** DCA, Mercers, Moorcroft, Cabot,Credit Security Ltd,....my husbands account has been in dispute for nearly 2 years. They have admitted they don't have an agreement. They do send letters, but the phonecalls have stopped. They are nothing more than toothless dogs, they can bark asloud as they want....but have no bite.

[laalinz]

Hi Tim

 

Mercers are the in-house provisional harassment wing of Barclaycard. Barclaycard are accountable for their actions so complain to them direct (including harassment at work - see other threads). They will raise a level 1 or level 2 complaint and respond with a standard template. then complain to FOS.

 

You will not get any sense out of Mercers, so have to ignore them. get Truecall or some other telecomms defence.

 

Their next move is Calder, in-house legal harassment team part outsourced to India which is where DPA becomes interesting.

 

This is far as my experience goes, so far .

 

love

 

vic

 

I h ave just been passed to Calders. What do you mean by their DPA becomes interesting?

[oilyrag]

Hi laalinz,

 

What I think Tim means is that under EU legislation reluctantly built into our Data Protection Act, your personal data cannot be passed to any third party outside the geographical boundaries of the European Union without YOUR EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION which conveniently the banks forgot to ask for. We had to sort out one very nasty and aggressive Barclays own call centre emanating from South Africa just after Barclays had been allowed back in there to trade. Once they realised that we knew more than what they assumed was the norm (wrongly) it was back in the UK toute suite as the French say.

 

regards

oilyrag.

[victoria_siempre]

Hi oily

 

I'm vic, not tim, however, you interpret my meaning correctly.

x

 

v

[oilyrag]

Please accept my apologies victoria, a senior moment I think.

 

regards

oilyrag