Discrepancy Between FAQ And Terms And Conditions For Barclays CD Early Withdrawal Penalties

Thanks for noting this change and discrepancy. Looks like they just changed the EWP, and they haven't updated the FAQs yet.

I looked at the Google cache, and on March 9th, the Terms and Conditions still said 90 days. So it must have changed in the last week.

Sorry to see the larger EWP. We'll need to confirm that this larger EWP only applies to new CDs.

I hope the old CD's are grandfathered.

Dang, I hope I'm alive in 5 years. I noticed in the latest blog of "Best CD Rates" Ken posted a update indicating that Barclays upped their penalty on CD's over 2 years to 180 days. He didn't indicate if it was "verified". I just checked my Barclays acct. and the Online CD FAQ still shows just 90 days.

I'm interested to hear the Barclays reply.

When I opened a CD on 3/14, both the FAQ and the Terms & Conditions had 90 days.

Now, of course, we have the unexplained discrepancy where FAQ says 90 days and T&C says 180 days.

I was planning to move online savings from Ally to Barclays, and to open some more 5yr CDs at Barclays, but this potentially introduces a few more factors to the decision, including

- Barclays competence. Can't draw any conclusions yet, but having FAQ and T&C out of synch at minimum seems to be an operational mistake. Where there is one operational error, there are often more.

- Barclays communication & transparency.  I haven't received anything yet that communicates a change from 90d to 180d.

- level of Barclays customer support relative to Ally. Looks like no way to chat or call if it's not M-F.

At this point, mainly food for thought.  Waiting for the details / answers, and for some sort of clear communication from Barclays.

UPDATE 18 Mar 2013 @ 09:57 EST:

I just called Barclays and talked with Jessica a CSR there. I asked about the penalty policy reference my newly purchased CD and that I had bought it based on the 90 day penalty fee indicated on the Online CD FAQ page. She said that in fact 90 days was the penalty.

I then described the conflict with the FAQ's and the Terms & Conditions pages in regards to the penalties imposed on early CD closures for terms greater than 24 mos. We both looked at each page so she was sure to see and understand what the issue was. After several checks by her I was told officially that there is an issue with the website and the information found there and that Barclays is aware of the problem and working on it. I was also told that officially Barclays is keeping the 90 day penalty for all CD's regardless of term. I asked if I could quote her on that and post it to a website and she indicated that would be fine as the call was being monitered.

We both had a good laugh as I indicated that Barclays will continue to hear from me.

I'm sorry to report that Barclays EWP is going up as indicated by the new Terms and Conditions document. On the plus side, this will not affect existing CDs. I've confirmed this with my Barclays contact.

I just did this blog post with the details.

Wow. After the time and effort put into trying and getting a confirmation from a quotable source only to find out that employees don't even know what's going on. Pitiful. Thanks Ken, sorry if I posted some bad info.

I was the person who discovered the discrepancy when I started an application for a 5 year cd at Barclays Bank on March 16 and I decided to read the Terms and Conditions inside the application.  I usually dont read these, just click on submit and move on.  Having read the FAQ previously, I was surprised the T & C was different.    I posted my findings on Kevins blog and he investigated the matter further and brought it to the publics attention here on this website.  The customer rep that I talked to on Monday didnt know anything about the change in the EWP and the customer rep that I talked to on Tuesday said they just received a memo on the change.  So I missed the 90 day EWP window by one day.

I then discovered that after I verified the two small deposits that Barclays made into my external account, that I could not fund the cd online, I had to call Barclays and have a customer rep do that.  Ok, i make the call and tell the customer rep that i want to transfer $41,000.00 into the cd.  The CR tells me that he made the transfer and that I should log out of my account and then log back in.  Then click on "pending transfers" and I should see the amount that I wanted to transfer.  The amount shown was $41,000,000.00.  I informed the CR that he entered the wrong amount.  He put me on hold for 10 minutes and when he came back, he told me that he had made an adjustment to the amount and when I log into my account tomorrow, I should see the corrected amount.  He said he will personally follow up with me tomorrow to verify that everything is correct.

So far, i'm not impressed with Barclays Bank and their customer service.

 

Hi Kevin -

No, I did not request that they honor the 90 day EWP, but I feel that I now have enough leverage to get that changed in my favor.  Thanks for the suggestion.

The rep that I spoke to today said that online ACH transfers only worked with funding the Online Savings account.  CDs have to be funded manually by a customer service rep.  I will try to get to the bottom of this when I talk to the rep tomorrow. 

Hopefully, this will all be straightened out and I wont get a call from my local bank tomorrow concerning my account being over-withdrawn.

 

Isn't that something. When I opened mine online I had set up the from acct prior. I then completed the acct opening information stuff and when it came time to select my product I was only offered checking or savings. Well thinking that a CD is a savings product I went that route to find that I had another savings acct. and how would I fund it. A phone call to a CSR revealed that I did have the savings acct and after an explanation from me on the issue of no way to select "purchase CD on-line" the CSR had to go in and manually close out the savings and open a CD. It was then explained about the ACH verification process which I already knew. After two days I completed the verification and on the same day requested that Barclays obtain the funds from my registered acct. That took 5 days. My acct is showing a 12 Mar opening even though the funds didn't come off hold until yesterday and the site is indicating I have been drawing interest since 13 Mar. I assume that those dates keep me as an "old" CD as I have not gotten any messages or alerts indicating otherwise.

Instead of waiting for the Barclays CSR to call me, I gave them another call today. The CSR that I talked to today seemed to be more knowledgeable about how things worked with their online accounts. He assured that you can do an ACH transfer to fund the CD during the application process. Something got ****ed up with my saved application and I got locked out. Had to call to get the password reset.

When he saw the $41 million figure in my cd account, I could almost hear his jaw hit the floor. He asked me what the proper amount should be and he saw that the other CSR had already put in an adjustment. He said the CSR that put the wrong numbers in yesterday sits next to him and that he was planning on calling me later today. He said the correct amount should show up in my account tomorrow. I checked the balance on my checking account at my local bank and no transfers had yet occurred.

I asked about the discrepancy in the EWP terms in the FAQ when I applied for the CD on Saturday, March 16. I asked if my account could be changed to 90 day EWP instead of the 180 day EWP. He put me on hold for a few minutes and said he was able to change my CD to 90 day EWP and I should receive a document in the mail in 7-10 days stating the change in the EWP terms.

Right now, I feel pretty confident that the glitches will be fixed and hopefully the next time I apply for a new CD at Barclays, it will go much smoother. Got my fingers crossed.

 

 

 

Checked my local bank checking account online this morning and saw a pending transaction from Barclays Bank for the erroneous $41 million dollar transfer.

Got on the phone this morning as soon as Barclays opened (I have their phone number permanently engraved in my brain at this point) and again explained the situation to the CSR.  He said he would put in a request (again) to cancel the transfer. 

I also contacted my local bank and asked them to reject the transfer.  They were getting calls from their processing bank about the huge transfer and it caused a lot of problems for them.  Talked to another CSR this afternoon at Barclays and she reassured me that they are on top of it. 

Sometimes, it doesn’t pay to go chasing a few extra interest dollars.

LOL, a $41 million transfer. I bet your local bank was pretty surprised having Barclays requesting $41 million transfer. It's hard to believe the various ways our banks and credit unions can **** up.

Yes I'm laughing myself. Sorry about your situation and hope you get it squared away. Wish the major news agencies would pick up on it. "Banking customer purchases major CD as a result of a clerical error".

 

I am glad everyone is getting some enjoyment from my escapades with opening a CD with Barclays Bank.

I thought I would post an update.  I had a voicemail message from a Barclays Bank supervisor on my answering machine.  When I called Barclays, that particular supervisor had left for the day.  I asked to talk to a different supervisor and I was connected to a supervisor that was very helpful.  He looked over the previous notes about the erroneous transfer for $41 million and asked if I had incurred any stop payment charges from my local bank on the transfer.  I told him that my bank gave me a credit for the stop payment charges.  Then he noticed that the correct amount transfer was pending the first transferred to be cancelled, which it was, at that point.  Then he put through the correct amount transfer and as of March 28, my online account at Barclays Bank is now showing the CD properly funded. He said he would also back date the interest to March 21.

He asked if there was anything else that he could help me with.  I said yes, I have a concern about a serious security flaw on my account.  I won't go into detail here because it might cause problems for other Barclay customers.  When he saw the security lapse, he was astonished and his personal accounts at Barclays showed the same security flaw.  He said he will send an email to someone at Barclays to fix the security flaw, but it will take several months for the security flaw to be fixed.  He said he was surprised no one else had brought this to their attention. 

Well I'll be the first to say great and ask "What is the security issue?". I'm sure if it is something that will effect customers of Barclays we would like to know what to watch out for.

Edit: Out of curiousity would it be the issue of being able to move forward or backwards to another site without officially logging out of Barclays? Caught that one as being a weak point when checking online.

Detailed information on security flaw deleted by poster.  I will post an update when Barclays Bank fixes the problem.