Fun and games paying Call18866 from Morgan Stanley/Barclaycard

Is that by looking at it online, or have you received a paper statement?

My paper statement has arrived today, and looks ok. It lists Previous balance and a matching Payment received (I always pay in full by DD) and then New Transactions and New balance (which are the same as each other). It states my available credit - which is the difference between credit limit and current balance, and so looks ok.

The only slightly odd thing is that it has a Payment Due date of 17th October, but says that "the appropriate amount" (unspecified!) will be collected by DD on 7th October - i.e. 10 days before it's due!

Morgan Stanley/Goldfish reduced the time between statement issue and DD collection (by delaying statement issue) but I thought from what I have read that Barclaycard were reinstating the 25-ish day interval. It will be interesting to see what happens on subsequent bills.

Online, on the DD page. The details on the summary page look OK.

My last paper statement was from MS saying my balance of about 150 will be collected by DD today (26th).

It said that currently the payment date is 28 days after your statement date, this will change to at least 20 days, but you won't be affected if you pay by DD. No 5 in their summary of changes to T&C's.

AIRI it used to be (about a year ago?) 25 days with MS, and DD's were collected after 25 days. Then they changed it to 28 days but 15 days if you pay by DD.

So I take that to mean DD's will still be collected after 15 days but you'll get at least 20 days if you don't.

What was your statement date? If it's 22nd then it sounds right, 15 days for DD and 25 days for non DD.

Yes, the statement is dated 22nd.

There's a daily limit per card too, defined by the issuer, but probably around £100. There's also the capability of a floor limit for each merchant, which is cumulative per card per day, so it can be setup so one merchant couldn't take more than, say, £30 per day from you over multiple transactions. No idea what sort of limit this is set to in practice, and it can vary by merchant. System can also decide to ask you for your PIN. During the trial, this seemed to happen about 1 in 10 transactions.

The issuer can in theory, but as to whether they have any process in place to do so is a different matter. The inductive loop in such cards is rather fragile in my experience. We use them at work and they hold money for paying for lunch and use in vending machines (it's a cash-less site, and they're top-up cards rather than credit cards). Every so often, a card stops working, and you can sometimes see a micro-crack on the edge (but often nothing visible). Then it's a question of waiting until they've collected all the accounting records from all the vending machines and tills, and working out how much money was on your card when it died.

Andrew Gabriel wrote

increments.

If the per transaction or per day limit can be set to zero then that of course would be enough. If you have requested a "No PIN, check signature" card then that too might disable the feature or force a check on every use.

Well - looking online again today it says my payment of the correct amount (full balance) was paid on the 26th. Available credit changed to reflect the payment, so that should mean they've got it .

But nothing has left my bank! The DD is set up but nothing has been collected. My available balance hasn't gone down on my bank account so it's not in the pipeline.

Anyone else having this "problem"?

In message , Andy Pandy wrote

They've probably taken it from someone else's bank account :)

Many a true work spoken in jest!

Looking my DD details on the Barclaycard website, they've got the correct sort code for my account but a totally spurious account number! The DD is not due to be invoked until 7th October, so it will be interesting to see what happens!

Meanwhile I've filed a query - both about that and about the fact that my "Previous Balance" shows the remaining credit rather than the proper figure - by sending then a secure email. I'm not holding my breath though - it took them the best part of 24 hours to send an automatic acknowledgement for my message!

Well my DD details are definitely correct and the DD is set up with the right reference etc.

Barclaycard are still happy that they got my payment on 26 Sept, but now over a week later nothing is showing on my bank account!

Maybe I should tell them. I would have by now if they still had the 0800 customer service number.

Any reply yet?

Interesting - Barclaycard did not collect my direct debit on the 30th, instead say my account is in default but they will not collect until november. Their call centre says there will be no interest and no penalty charges.

However they did close my account, tell me it was impossible to re-open an account and 30 seconds later re-open the account. And today I got my third set of cards.

Not that they are much use since every time I have tried to use the cards both in shops and at ATMs all the cards have been rejected.

And I have had 20 'compensation' for my problems.

This is going to be an expensive take over for Barclaycard.

-- Mark BR

Yes and no! They've replied but haven't answered the question - saying that I need to ring customer services because they can't send confidential information by email! [It seems that you can send a confidential email to

*them*, but they can't send one to *you*. Other financial institutions seem to be able to put confidential replies on their websites, and then send you an ordinary email telling you to log on to retrieve the confidential stuff. Why can't Barclaycard do that?]

Anyway, before receiving their email, I got fed up with waiting and edited the account number in my DD setup on the Barclaycard site. It does say that changes take several working days to take effect - so they might not be using the correct details by the time that the DD is invoked on 7th. After I had changed it (maybe I should have done so *before* I changed it!), I had another look at my bank account on the Lloyds TSB site - and a DD has appeared in favour of Barclaycard, but with nothing charged against it so far. Maybe they had it right all along, but just displayed the wrong account number on their site - in the same way that they display a completely wrong previous balance.

I suppose I *could* ring Customer Services for free over the weekend by using their 'calling from abroad' number, but I'm not sure I can be arsed - I might just wait to see what happens on 7th.

In message , Andy Pandy wrote

My DD details were correct and I didn't get a £6000+ charge, as still detailed on the web site. The outstanding MS cash-back was credited to my account as the statement went out (but with no mention of the total or a breakdown on the amount).

I have now got another letter from Barclays saying that I will soon be receiving a new card for a long dead account with Goldfish.

I cancelled by Goldfish card when they devalued the points back scheme and replaced the my card with a M&S cash-back card long before Goldfish took over M&S.

It appears that Barclays may have paid good money for phantom accounts.

I presume you mean M-S as in Morgan Stanley rather than M&S as in Marks & Spencer?