A Barclays customer was left without £5,000 for months after the bank closed a dormant savings account last March but simply failed to hand her back the money until January.
Loretta Marshall, not her real name, from Worcestershire, had a savings account with the bank which went dormant last year after she had not touched the money in it for five years.
After the bank wrote a letter to let her know in December 2019, and then again last March, to tell her the account would be made dormant and closed, Mrs Marshall, retired and in her 60s, assumed she would simply be sent the money by cheque.
Loretta Marshall, in her 60s, was left without £5,133 from a dormant savings account between August and January because Barclays simply failed to pay her
When she finally took action in August, she was given three options if she wanted to access the dormant funds, which had been moved to a different account after the closure.
She could either use the ‘My Lost Account’ service, normally reserved for old bank books, to trace the money, write Barclays a letter or take her passport and driving licence to her local branch, which was in Malvern, a town 20 minutes’ drive from Worcester.
Opting for the third option, with coronavirus cases easing over the summer months, she was instead told she needed to provide a recent bank statement with her address on it from Nationwide Building Society, her current account provider.
Rather than transferring the money to her bank account, she was told in the branch that she would be sent a cheque ‘within two weeks’.
This deadline came and went, so she called Barclays again, after which she was ‘told that the local branch had misled me and that it would actually take them three months to send me my money’. This delay was blamed on the coronavirus, she said.
By mid-September, Mrs Marshall said, the ‘bank had changed its mind again and would, instead of sending a cheque, be making a transfer to my Nationwide account after all’, provided she sent back sufficient authentication.
Our dormancy team did receive your letter confirming your account details and we were ready to make this payment on 1 December 2020, but the payment wasn’t made.
Barclays letter, 22 January 2021
She did, but still the money failed to turn up.
Frustrated, she wrote the bank a letter of complaint a month later and asked for the money to be paid ‘without further delay’ and for £250 compensation for the inconvenience.
But although Barclays responded to her a month later, when she spoke to This is Money at the start of last December and again in early January 2021, she had still not received her money, 10 months after the account was closed and five months after she had first got in touch with Barclays.
The bank initially claimed they had not received the letter she sent on 20 September providing the details and authorisation they had asked for so they could transfer the £5,133.
But, shortly after we contacted it in touch with them last month, it sent her a letter on 22 January which stated ‘our dormancy team did receive your letter confirming your account details and we were ready to make this payment on 1 December 2020.’
However, the payment simply ‘wasn’t made’, according to the letter, with no explanation as to why. It simply apologised for the ‘distress’ this had caused.
Barclays has offered Loretta Marshall £200 compensation, however she is holding out for more from the Financial Ombudsman Service
The money was finally transferred after our intervention on 14 January, just under four months after she had written the letter to Barclays providing them with the details they needed to make the transfer.
Had it not been for This is Money’s involvement, Mrs Marshall said, ‘I’m sure I’d still be waiting for my money’. She has complained to the Financial Ombudsman Service and is seeking more compensation than the £200 offered by the bank.
Barclays said in a statement: ‘It is evident that on this occasion we have failed to provide the high levels of service that our customers can expect to receive, and we have offered our apologies for this.
‘The protection of our customer’s funds is one of our highest priorities and the account was closed as a result of no activity for a number of years. We can confirm that the funds have now been returned to our customer.
‘The case is currently being investigated by the Financial Ombudsman Service, and we await the conclusion of their review.’
