Bathroom Storage - Cool 

Wednesday 2nd July, 2008 - £8,850.98 in debt…

Things I learnt in June:

1.  Temping agencies must be treated with caution until you actually start the job.

2.  Fortunately, unlike my previous agency, Office Angels gives me sick pay, bank holiday pay, petrol allowance and the baffling “subsistence”, which I think must be sandwich money or compensation for my house sliding down a cliff.

3.  Filling out forms on Consumer Pulse is a fine and noble pastime but, as it turns out, they only pay you for 20 items per month! Fair enough – I was running out of imagination anyway.

4.  Budgeting is fun and fascinating, but only if you do it properly and be reasonable with yourself.

5.  I don’t really need a bathroom storage unit.

6.  Ice cream bad; mystery shopping good. My favourite mystery shopping company so far is GfK.

7.  The Barclays personal reserve may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

8.  If I keep an eye on petrol prices and drive like an OAP looking for a parking space, I might save some money.

9.  Texperts and AQA could offer the answer to everything, including my prayers.

10.  If all else fails, I can always talk to lonely old men about bottoms.

 More ‘Personal Reserve’ issues…

Thursday 12th June, 2008 - £8,920.19 in debt…

As a Barclays customer with a fair number of bank charges to reclaim, I’m sensing that something unsavoury might be afoot.

You might recall that, a couple of weeks ago, Barclays announced that it was launching what it calls a “personal reserve” - an additional amount on top of a customer’s overdraft, which will act as a buffer. As I’m always going over my overdraft limit, I was happy to hear about this. Today I received the paperwork through the post.

From August 18th this year, there will be a £150 reserve added to my £3,000 overdraft limit. This means that, for a fee of £22 (for every five consecutive days I use the reserve), Barclays will honour payments up to £150 over my limit. Isn’t that lovely of them? They’re referring to it as “a little extra breathing space”. Bless. If I go over the reserve amount, obviously they will have to charge a “returned transaction fee” of £8, but who can blame them?

Well, I can blame them. Call me paranoid, but isn’t this just a way of renaming their fees so that I can’t claim them back if the high court decides that overdraft charges are unfair? After all, apparently I’ll be paying for a so-called service.

If I go over my new limit, I’ll still pay £30 (the same amount I’m paying now), but at best I’ll only be able to claim back the £8 “over-overdraft-and-reserve” charge.

The thing that bothers me the most is the bank’s patronising attitude to its customers, who are all easily-led simpletons as far as Barclays are concerned. All over their little explanatory leaflets is the message: ”Gone over your overdraft limit, eh? Don’t worry - we’re here to help! Let’s just give you a bit of cash to sort yourself out and then we’ll forget all about it, okay?”

Of course, what they really mean is “It’s pretty much the same as before, only more complicated because we’re covering our own backs and saving ourselves some money. We need it more than you do. Hope you don’t mind - you can opt out if you do mind, but we’ve done that for our own benefit as well, so that we can say you had a choice. And you’re probably too stupid to tick a box without jabbing yourself in the eye anyway.”

Well, I’m opting out. Stick that in your pipes and smoke it, faceless Barclays bigwigs. Ha.

 With one hand they giveth….

It appears I was right to be suspicious of the new Barclays overdraft charges and ‘personal reserve’ system.

On further inspection of the small print, it’s only a handful of account holders that are likely to benefit from these changes. Most Barclays customers who consistently breach their overdraft limit will be in approximately the same boat at the end of each month balance-wise, give or take a pound or two.

How so? Well, here comes the science:

• The bank has reduced it’s fee for going overdrawn without prior agreement from £35 to £22

• The agreed overdraft interest rate has risen from 15.5% to 18%, offsetting any gains from the reduced fee.

• Should you borrow beyond your agreed overdraft, Barclays will allow you a ‘personal reserve’, or buffer. This buffer, which is advertised as being anything up to £1500, will in fact be £250 on average. It will cost you £22 to use this buffer.

• Once you start borrowing from the personal reserve, you will not be charged for any transactions made for five days. Once the five days have elapsed, you will be charged £8 per transaction.

• If you exceed the personal reserve, you will be charged £8 per transaction.

• On top of this, credit interest has been reduced to 0%

Baring in mind most account holders who borrow beyond their overdraft are caught in a monthly cycle, the charges incurred month on month with the new system are likely to mirror those incurred with the existing system.

The marked difference between Barclays new and existing accounts is the terminology behind them. The terms of these new accounts are entangled and complex, designed deliberately to confuse the account holders.

On the plus side, nobody will be worse off. However, there’s very little to gain for those with money troubles, and this move by banks can be viewed as a distinct sidestep around the ‘unfair fees’ problem.

‘Barclays slash overdraft fees’? Don’t believe the hype.