Barclays Business Account - £6000 removed ***Resolved***

[europa16]

I am so stressed at the moment because Barclays have pulled a real good'un from their bag if crap.

An old customer accidentally sent us £6000 by bank transfer on Wednesday morning, rang us up to explain and asked if we could get it back to him.

Stupid us rang Barclays and told them what had happened and to return it back to the account it came from because it wasn't our money.

After an hour on the phone, a reversal was done on the payment.

Next morning, another £6000 gets removed out of the account. No warning, nothing. Several long calls to call centres abroad (around 4hrs worth) and it may be that the fraud department has pulled the funds and investigating. 

They've said it will take 10 days. We've got bills to pay and none of this is our fault. All we did was tell Barclays to put the original £6k back where it came from. 

Have we been caught up in some weird [problem] where the guy who transferred the funds gets his money back twice or are Barclays incompetent.

We raised the issue, we are getting penalised. No wonder people keep their mouths shut when unexpected money lands in their account!

[AndyOrch]

I think I would be questioning why your old customer made the payment by mistake...6K by mistake ?

Have you checked with this customer he has got it back ?

 

Andy

[europa16]

No idea, I did suggest to my husband that he rings him but I think he'd end up letting rip at the guy.

Even the woman at Barclays call centre on Wed thought how did they do that without checking it.

The whole thing stinks and Barclays have made it worse by pulling this stunt with no info.

Husbands gone into the local branch but they're too busy and he needs an appointment ffs

[AndyOrch]

Shocking service and this Banks name comes up regularly here with regards to the same treatment to customers.....take a read of the other threads.

Have you tweeted this? CAG is having a few  problems with our Tweet account so we cant tweet it at the moment.

Escalate to the CEO dont bother with local branches.

Please update your thread with any developments...hope they refund you soon

[europa16]

Certainly going to escalate this. Tweeted on Barclays account but only so much they have access to isnt there (they replied asking for PM)

[europa16]

Is the CEO Ashok Viswani? Is his email address available?

[AndyOrch]

https://home.barclays/who-we-are/structure-and-leadership/leadership/ashok-vaswani/

https://twitter.com/avvaswani?lang=en

https://www.barclayscorporate.com/general-info/important/complaints-commitment.html

[fkofilee]

https://ceoemail.com/

 

Send to Jes and Ashok

[europa16]

Thank you for the links

Other half ended up going to our “local” branch (6 miles away) and it turns out that not only have Barclays put a hold on the £6000, they have frozen the account  

We are an innocent party who almost got screwed for £6k, and we are getting treated by criminals by Barclays. 15 days to investigate fraud with the account - you couldn’t make this up!

[slick132]

Hi Euro,

This may be bad news as a "frozen" a/c can often mean there's an Anti Money Laundering check going on.

This means you may be told nothing and the bank could take as long as they need to carry out the (behind the scenes) regulatory checks.

Proceed with the complaint to Head Office in any event as this may be your best chance, because it sounds to me like this should never have been anything other than a "payment error" reversal.

Keep us posted.

[comebackjimmy]

Hello

Sorry to read of your troubles.

We had a problem with Barclays over the Christmas period in our business account and it is a sorry tale and not good news for you.

We frequently deposit cash sums into our account and have done since we opened it about 4 years ago.

In the week before Christmas we did so and Barclays froze our account and all the others by applying a £500K "overdraft" on all of the accounts so that we could not take money out.

I spent a fruitless day in branch and on the phone to no avail.  I was in real trouble as we needed to pay our staff for Christmas and had no money with which to do it.  Barclays staff had no idea, or at least if they did they were not telling us.

We went to court and tried to get an injunction to get our money back or for them to give a reason why our account was frozen.  The court expedited the hearing but Barclays did not turn up due to service issues so the court postponed the case.

10 working days after the freeze the account was restored but a few days later we were given 60 days notice and have now moved to Metrobank.  They offered no explanation except for push button letters and did not even refund the charges they made for bouncing direct debits even though we had frozen funds.

Here is what I think happened and what I think is happening to you.

Day one: They suspected or feared that the deposit was due to money laundering.   If they have a suspicion (or one of their staff has a suspicion of)  money laundering then if they do not report it to the National Crime Agency they can be prosecuted for assisting in money laundering.  Therefore, having themselves come to a suspicion they reported the transaction and froze the account.  By doing so the law allows them to claim immunity against prosecution for assisting money laundering. In other words, they covered their asses!

From this point on, they did not give any meaningful information because if they were to advise us that they suspected us of money laundering and had notified the National Crime Agency then they would be at risk of prosecution for tipping us off! by not speaking to us they once again covered their asses!

The NCA will review the report and if they have not communicated to Barclays that they are interested in the report after 10 working days then Barclays will assume that all is well and restore the account and this is what happened to us at Day 10, as far as I can tell, almost to the hour.

This is what will likely happen to you.  If you look at the date/time of your bank freeze and add ten WORKING days that is the day you will get your account back and until that time you will get nothing from Barclays no explanation before, during or after the event.

Total Madness.

Likely they will follow up with notice to close your account. why? to cover their asses!!

Notice in my explanation that everything was about covering their asses and your ass does not matter!

My advice to you is not to wait but to open another account.  I can strongly recommend Starling Bank for both personal and business accounts.   (We went Metro because both directors in our business need access and Starling currently only allows one person to access an account as they are mobile phone based, but brilliant with Mastercard for payments and full deposit facilities at any Post Office).

Get rid of Barclays.  Notwithstanding they think you may be a risk to them they are a definite risk to you and all other Barclays Account holders and have demonstrated it already.

    

[fkofilee]

4 minutes ago, comebackjimmy said:

Hello

Sorry to read of your troubles.

We had a problem with Barclays over the Christmas period in our business account and it is a sorry tale and not good news for you.

We frequently deposit cash sums into our account and have done since we opened it about 4 years ago.

In the week before Christmas we did so and Barclays froze our account and all the others by applying a £500K "overdraft" on all of the accounts so that we could not take money out.

I spent a fruitless day in branch and on the phone to no avail.  I was in real trouble as we needed to pay our staff for Christmas and had no money with which to do it.  Barclays staff had no idea, or at least if they did they were not telling us.

We went to court and tried to get an injunction to get our money back or for them to give a reason why our account was frozen.  The court expedited the hearing but Barclays did not turn up due to service issues so the court postponed the case.

10 working days after the freeze the account was restored but a few days later we were given 60 days notice and have now moved to Metrobank.  They offered no explanation except for push button letters and did not even refund the charges they made for bouncing direct debits even though we had frozen funds.

Here is what I think happened and what I think is happening to you.

Day one: They suspected or feared that the deposit was due to money laundering.   If they have a suspicion (or one of their staff has a suspicion of)  money laundering then if they do not report it to the National Crime Agency they can be prosecuted for assisting in money laundering.  Therefore, having themselves come to a suspicion they reported the transaction and froze the account.  By doing so the law allows them to claim immunity against prosecution for assisting money laundering. In other words, they covered their asses!

From this point on, they did not give any meaningful information because if they were to advise us that they suspected us of money laundering and had notified the National Crime Agency then they would be at risk of prosecution for tipping us off! by not speaking to us they once again covered their asses!

The NCA will review the report and if they have not communicated to Barclays that they are interested in the report after 10 working days then Barclays will assume that all is well and restore the account and this is what happened to us at Day 10, as far as I can tell, almost to the hour.

This is what will likely happen to you.  If you look at the date/time of your bank freeze and add ten WORKING days that is the day you will get your account back and until that time you will get nothing from Barclays no explanation before, during or after the event.

Total Madness.

Likely they will follow up with notice to close your account. why? to cover their asses!!

Notice in my explanation that everything was about covering their asses and your ass does not matter!

My advice to you is not to wait but to open another account.  I can strongly recommend Starling Bank for both personal and business accounts.   (We went Metro because both directors in our business need access and Starling currently only allows one person to access an account as they are mobile phone based, but brilliant with Mastercard for payments and full deposit facilities at any Post Office).

Get rid of Barclays.  Notwithstanding they think you may be a risk to them they are a definite risk to you and all other Barclays Account holders and have demonstrated it already.

    

Your account was closed because you took legal action against Barclays. 

They view it as a breakdown of relationship between the customer and the bank themselves. Part of the T&Cs outside of the ML Regs for this account will include that they can close your account if there is a breakdown of relationship between yourselves. 

Anyway if you wish to tell us more - Please create a new thread - We are still waiting to hear back from the OP.

[comebackjimmy]

Hi fkofilee

Thanks for the comment.  Had no thought of our legal action giving rise to the notice but it does of course make sense.

I am not trying to hijack this post with my own story by the way but wanted to offer my experience to the OP and I am not seeking any advice about this on CAG, but if you think it worthwhile then maybe I should create my own thread.

I think my experience does reveal a pattern that is that the account is likely to be restored after the 10 working days, and I think it is none the less a good idea to get another bank account going.

 

[slick132]

Not wanting to add to the hijack of Europa's thread but ........

........ just to add another angle on this, we've seen many Barclays bank a/c's closed over many years by the bank after an Anti ML enquiry/freeze where no court action was taken against the bank.

No explanation, no suggestion of any wrongdoing, no funds confiscated but the a/c was closed anyway.

I took my own bank to court years back and they left my a/c open despite refunding £2.8K in fees.

However, I fully agree that Europa should take pre-emptive action and seek alternative banking facilities in case Barclays close a/c's. 

[europa16]

Comebackjimmy, Wow! Thank you for sharing this, it’s scary how they can screw over your business with one move with no comeback (although not in the least surprising ).

 

Earlier this week, the money was returned to the account and we could access the account finally. Certainly a lot quicker than we expected but still no communication until this afternoon. 

 

Someone from the complaints department rang my husband and asked him to go through the issue again (?!), didn’t comment on how their call centre adviser almost lost us £6000, but did finally take the details of the account it was to be transferred to, and the [EDIT]’s phone number (obviously a Lyca mobile burner).

There was no mention of why it happened, only “it’s for your protection”. Ha!!

 

They also gave us a £100 apology payment which I suppose covers the hours and phone minutes lost fixing this.

 

My husband is now looking for another business account but doesn’t want to end up with a bank that will screw us over just as much, and have zero customer service.

[AndyOrch]

Glad this has been resolved for you europa16

Thread title updated to reflect the outcome.

Regards

Andy

[comebackjimmy]

We moved to Metrobank.  good choice except for the lack of branches unless you are in London.  If you need cash deposits you can do it via Post Offices using your Metrobank card and account.