April 2, 2008
Banking Woes 2: Capital One the ugly sequel
I'm sorry, oh avid reader, I advised you that Capital One had made amends and sorted out my credit card (click here and scroll down to the section below Charlie Chaplin).
I was, in fact, wrong.
I have spoken to the lovely people in Capital One's call centre at least five times, each time requesting that they remove the block on my card and give me access to nearly £1500 of my money. Each time I get a different response.
According to Sandy, the fault is mine because I should not have transfered a large sum onto my account and, consequently, am subject to a FIVE DAY delay.
The eloquent Fiona agrees with Sandy that it is my fault, but informed me that I must wait FOURTEEN DAYS before the money will clear in my account and I would have access to my cash on April 8th (I nearly choked on my coffee when she said that, but I resisted the temptation to correct her mathematics).
Intriguingly, Ronnie took a different tack. He acknowledged that the money had cleared onto my account (it's been showing online since April 19th), he also accepted that sufficient time had passed for me to be able to access my cash and he spoke to someone in the authorizations team to have the block on my account removed. Bingo!
That was on Sunday 30th April. Today is Wednesday 2nd March. Last night I was once more told that my card has been blocked. I was trying to pay for dinner for the potential client I had invited.
I don't know what is happening with my account, but it looks as though Fiona may have been right.
The written message I received from Capital One last week says the following:
"Thank you for contacting us about your recent payment I'm sorry that we weren't helpful when you called us. We should've answered your question correctly the first time and I'm sorry that you've had to contact us again about this. I can confirm that we've received a payment of £2,000.00 and added this to your account on 19 March 2008. Please note that when you make a payment you should allow 5 working days for it to be credited to your account. It then takes 24 hours before it will show on your account service screen. Your transactions were declined as your transactions were referred for manual authorisation as you have paid extra money to your account."
Does anyone have the address of the Banking Ombudsman, please?
Posted by dompannell at April 2, 2008 5:15 PM