I left an account in The Woolwich in the UK with a decent amount of money in it for paying for families birthday presents, parents flights out here etc. I just decided last week to log onto it online and see what the balance was.... and its been moved to Barclays

I went to the Barclays site, and it says, if you didn't access your Woolwich online account in the 3 months prior to the switch, the we didn't bother sending you login details for accessing your account through Barclays online banking.

So I rang Barclays online banking helpline, they asked me security questions like "Whats my phone number?" (errr, my phone number here, or my phone number at my previous address in Australia, or my old phone number in the uk???). So the lady on the phone said I failed the security questions and she couldn't help me.

"So how do I change the security questions?"

"You need to go to your nearest Barclays branch with 2 forms of identification etc etc..."

"My nearest Barclays is 13,000 miles away!"

"Well you could write to them and explain your situation"

This is going to take months to get access to my money again. What is the story with a bank assuming if you haven't accessed your account in 3 months, then its ok to move it, change the account details, and lock you out from it, and not send you even an email, never mind a letter, telling you the new details. Call me cynical, I reckon Barclays is hoping lots of people will never track down their money again, and Barclays will pocket it.

When I do get access to it again, they first thing I'm going to do is transfer it all over here, and shut the account, as payback for pulling such a sneaky stunt.

JTL

The Woolwich has been sending leters for months about the switch did you not get them or did you not change your address?

Bruce

I had similar problems with Barclays................ they refused to send me out any more statements as my signature has changed since i opened the account in 1965? Of course my bloody signature has changed................ I'm nearly fifty years older than I was then.......... my lamps aren't as good ........ and my bones ache

I got someone ring me up from India because i complained; never got anywhere though. I had to sort it all out in a branch in Blackpool on a recent visit there; I'm back on their system and receiving statements once more. It was a nightmare getting it all sorted though............. total incompetence on Barclay's part.

Nope! I was getting statements from the Woolwich up until about 2 months ago at our current address in Australia, but no letters about changing to Barclays . Now no statements, and no access to my account.

And to Bobcat: Yeah, it was an indian call centre I was put through to as well. You can imagine the audio quality of a VOIP call from Australia to the UK redirected to India. In between the delay, the echo, the crackling, and trying to understand each others accents, it was a pretty pointless exercise. Apparently the call centre lady was called "Judith" though .

If this is an example of Barclays "Customer Service", I'm outta there!

JTL

I had just had a thought, was all the mail you got sent about the Woolwich / Barclays change sent by Post Office Mailsort (you know the cheapo mail which has a big M in the top right hand corner of the envelope)? Its used by companies to send out circulars and advertising crap, but sometimes companies cut corners and use it to send out important stuff.

I was a postman 17 years ago, and I know that Mailsort stuff is treated with contempt by posties, and if it had an australian address on it, they would just laugh and bin it. No way in a million years would a mailsort letter get delivered to Australia (for one thing, the postage paid is nowhere near enough). Do you still have the envelope of one of those letters?

JTL

I don't know about the first one or two but the majority were "proper post" as it had information on new account numbers, time scales etc, my experience was quite smooth (obviously I'm in the UK)- hope they haven't sent you cash cards - don't want those going missing!

Bruce

good luck trying to transfer your money over from Barclays.

took me 8 months and a threat to report them to the financial ombudsmen to get my money out of their bank!!!

And the fiasco continues

Over the last three months I've received a letter a month from Barclays saying they are 'investigating' what happened to my account.

Finally today, I got a letter from them saying, it was my fault I didn't receive the letters they sent informing me of the account change, and I need to ring Barclays online banking to get them to send me new details.

This is the same Barclays online banking that said I needed to write to their complaints department to get issued new details.

I said that I wasn't prepared to start this whole fiasco again, as I know Barclays online banking will just tell me to write to the complaints department, so the complaints department suggested I write a letter to...... THE COMPLAINTS DEPARTMENT :curse:.

Now its not like me to fracture at a poor helpdesk person, but I'd really had it with these people...

So shes now said SHE will talk to barclays online banking and get them to send me online login details for my account. I'm not holding my breath.

I think I will also write to them and cause an even bigger fuss, because this is beyond ridiculous.


JTL

my son had a savings account with the woolwich with a credit card
Barclays wrote and gave 1 weeks notice that his card wouldn't work and sent him a new card which can only be used in a cash machine.

As my son is autistic and rarely leaves the house this was useless

we have closed the Barclays account and transferred all the money to his Lloyds account.

We are in the UK. We have a Woolwich offsetting mortgage. Our savings were in a Woolwich account and instead of interest being paid to us, it was used to reduce the mortgage payment. In addition to this, we had cheque books, cash / switch /guarantee cards, telephone and internet banking and DD's set up on this account.

We had this account for 3 years and all went smoothly. We knew it was going to be taken over by Barclays but were told it would all carry on as normal until we got our new Barclays cheque book and cards.

When we booked our reccie we paid with our Woolwich switch card over the phone. The payment was refused. So we paid with a credit card, (incurring a fee. :curse. The next time we tried to use our Woolwich card it was also refused. We rang Barclays who said the daily spending limit had been changed and because we tried to pay for our airtickets with it - which was more than £1000, they had cancelled our cards! We had no letter about this change, no phone call to to tell us there was a problem. This was 10 days before we were due to leave the country for a month's reccie. All our money was in the Barclays account. So we asked to transfer some money out. We were told we could only request to transfer £1000 on any day. So we had to set up a series of £1000 transfers into another account in case we needed to access our money!

When we got back from the reccie we were too scared to try and use Barclays cards for anything so used another account. Then a few weeks ago, I tried to pay for something on the Barclays card and it was refused again! :curse: I phoned them and they said because I hadn't used my new switch card for 3 months they had cancelled it!!! So we had to order yet more cards - which we used to take £10 out to activate. We will have to make sure we do this every 3 months. At no time were we advised that this new condition would apply when we got the new cards.

Unfortunately we have to keep this account as it is offsetting our mortgage, otherwise we would close it immediately.

When we move to Oz, I don't know how we can get our money exchanged from this account if they won't transfer more than £1000 per day. I guess we'll have to cross this bridge when we come to it.

The annoying thing is, we deliberately closed our Barclaycard and Barclays bank accounts a few years ago because the service and charges were unnaceptable they have now foisted themselves on us again uninvited.