Barclays Personal Reserve Ready To Go
On Monday 18th August, Barclays Bank is going to launch its Personal Reserve service to consumers.
The new service is going to act as a safety barrier to protect its customers against unfair bank charges. Cardholders will be presented with a pre-agreed and pre-notified level of funds that a customer can borrow, past their normal borrowing limit.
A flat fee of �22 will be charged to a customer, should they go past this pre agreed figure. This amount is charged in order to cover payments and withdrawals made to accounts for the five days subsequent to going over the limit.
A spokesperson for the bank said "We know from our research customers appreciate the certainty, simplicity and transparency that Personal Reserve will bring," and added "Most competitors' overdraft charging structures are highly complicated and difficult for customers to understand. The benefit of the new Barclays structure is that a customer knows exactly what payments are going to go through, what they are going to get charged and when."
There will be no interest charged on the Personal Reserve amount that is agreed between the customer and the bank, and there will be no additional charge for having the service while it is not in use.
To prepare for the launch of the new service, the bank have launched an Internet micro site, explaining how it all works.
It is thought that 90% of the banks cardholders have decided to keep the service as part of their First Reserve account.
Kevin Mountford, who acts as Head of savings and current accounts at Moneysupermarket.com, said "I don't think they are making the system any easier for consumers as the Personal Reserve isn't as clear as Barclays make out, indeed it has had to set up a video blog just to help explain it to customers. The truth of the matter is that if overdraft charges were lower banks wouldn't need to resort to confusing 'reserves' and 'buffer zones' to try and make the charges more palatable."
Mr Mountford is also sceptical over the claim that 90% of the customers chose to stick with the deal, saying this was a positive opt out, and that the majority of people were just accepting what they had been offered.
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