Don’t panic but:
has anyone else received an email apparently from Barclaycard in the past few days saying that your cards will be cancelled on October 3 and your account closed sometime in November?
I’m a bit suspicious about the email I got because the mail address is very odd and this has come out of the blue with no advance warning. Which you would have expected.
It also looks very much like the email they sent us around Brexit time saying the same thing, even to the date if memory serves. That decision was of course later withdrawn. So before wasting time and money calling Barclaycard I thought I’d check whether I am alone in receiving this message.
Could you not post the email, addresses included, with the personal information redacted of course, and I’m sure the forum will be able to give you an idea whether it’s likely genuine pretty quickly, otherwise it is literally a case of saying ‘no, I haven’t received one’, which given no one else has said anything is, I suspect, the case?
“READERS have complained that credit card company Barclaycard has told them it is closing their accounts because they do not have a UK address – and the bank has admitted that it is doing so, but only for customers who have not used the account in the past six months.
The company was replying to dozens of complaints from Connexion readers who said they had received a letter in the post telling them their Barclaycard account was being closed, with effect from June 9.
Manoj Piplani, MD of Barclaycard UK, said: "While our cards can be used in most countries in the world, our terms and conditions make it clear that customers should have a valid UK address.
"Although we can support overseas addresses on a temporary basis, our accounts are not designed to be registered to permanent overseas addresses.
"To minimise inconvenience, we are only closing overseas based accounts that have not been used at all for more than six months. Customers who still regularly use their cards are not affected.
“Also, customers who do not use their accounts, but would like to keep them open, can do so by providing us a UK contact address for the account.”
Sorry about the macular degeneration…my mum had it but luckily one eye retained some vision thanks to the injections.
Good to have the heads up. Thanks @terry We do have a UK address but our use of our cards has dropped off sharply with the finalisation of Brexit. So we’ll make a point of using them from time to time.
and I can’t find anything more recent than 14th September 2020 …
when The Connexion and FR24 reported the same worry/warning (albeit one in French)
I cannot locate a 2021 article in The Connexion (or anywhere else) … but if folk are beginning to receive the notifications, once again… I’m sure The Connexion will be hot on the trail of “The Facts”…
Thank you. It is a fact that I have not used my card so much since the macular degeneration got worse because I can’t read books and buying books was what I used it for mostly. But the account has never been dormant as I have a number of regular subscriptions that are debited to the card. It would not be the end of the world to lose the Barclaycard as I still have American Express but not everyone accepts that card. Let’s hope the debit card continues to work.
As to the macula degeneration, Dragon has been a lifesaver. I have the French professional version which allows me to write in both French and English. Without it I wouldn’t be able to write things like this. Fortunately, so long as I can increase the text size I can read most things on the computer. Now I need to find something that will read texts to me. I shall have to talk to my technical advisers a.k.a. my son and grandson!
Keep up with technology! It was just sooo important for my mother as she lived by herself and mastering a computer, and online shopping, etc etc with the aid of the various gizmos that were available to the time kept her independent to the end (at 96).
Barclaycard are sending this to its customers because they have no UK address. Isn’t Barclaycard head office in the City of London ? which was stablished just after the City area was created by Cromwell.
I believe that is in the City of London. Not London Metropolitan. Therefore not in the UK that’s why all the banks are there. Its little known that it sits outside the UK. Cromwell put it there in 1680 something, so the Monarchy sits outside the UK. Queen has to ask to leave.
No democracy its own police force and voting in elections carried out by nominated bankers. Bit Like Vatican City.
And the Government complains about Tax evasion and the morality of Tax. Food for thought.
The City of London has special status, so although a borough it has it’s own Mayor and elections and police force sure. People who live there vote in normal national elections, it’s just the local mayor that is different. And is part of the United Kingdom, and subject to the same laws as in the rest of the UK. The Queen remains the monarch even if she needs to ask the Mayor if she can visit (after all that’s only polite, and anyway she never goes anywhere without the local administration and police knowing about it). Given that the City is so rich, this saves money elsewhere.
Can you imagine, if the City was not in the UK then 48% of the population would have moved there in 2016 !
!