Consumer complaint received 2017-05-04
Company: BARCLAYS BANK DELAWARE
State: MN
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Other problem

Complaint:
Violation of Federal Credit Reporting Act : Denied Right to Receive Copy of Credit Report After Denial.
Fraud : Deliberate Policy designed to prevent access to pay bills Contract Fraud : Deliberate policy designed to get customers to miss out on offers included in a contract.
Issues relate to companywide policy, albeit one that would only affect a small ( likely 1-10 % ) p  ercentage of customers and likely why they have n't had an issue with regulators yet. **Request for formal investigation by CFPB and not just a forwarding of complaint for company response. ** In recent call ( dated :   XXXX   2017 )  with   Barclays credit card services, it was made clear to me that Barclays has made a couple of policies that violate federal law.
Pertinent Facts 1 ) Barclays like almost all banks use a third party servi  ce to verify identification for the purposes of identifying possible fraudulent activity. There is no issue with doing that, but all of those services (   XXXX   XXXX  ,   XXXX       XXXX   XXXX  ,   XXXX   XXXX   XXXX  , etc. ) store information on  American Citizens  for financial transactions and therefore qualify under the   Federal Credit Reporting Act.
2 ) One of the areas where Barclays will deploy questions from this service is when anyone uses their credit card balance transfer system. The credit reporting agency Barclays contracts for verification clearly had some incorrect information on me. That triggered a fraud block.
Fraud and Breach of Contract Agreements 1 ) Upon calling into Barclays the ban  k required that I provide front and back copies of drivers license and social security card via regular mail to  Barclays   XXXX   XXXX   to release the account. Several attempts to get Barclays to agree to verbal verification by answering as many questions as needed were blocked by represen tatives. Attempts to get requested information to   Barclays via other quicker or more secure methods such as fax, secure email, upload to secure system, etc. were turned away.
2 ) This act is a breach of contract of all Barclays c  ard agreements as this removes access to their accounts for an unreasonable amount of time. This can trigger forced late payments by preventing access to pay accounts when needed. This can also prevent access to account for needed funds.   Barclays should be able to conform to what is essentially the industry standard of same day verification in one form or another.
3 ) The only rational purpose for demanding an insecure slow mailing of document verification by Barclays is the   deliberate attempt to cause cardholders to go past payment due dates while their accounts are restricted or go past promo periods on special offers that the customer took out the account to obtain. I  f Barclays motivation for the documents was to prevent fraud and not to deliberately restrict accounts that Barclays would provide a more secure and quicker method of submitting requested documentation.
Violation of FCRA 1 ) During discussions with Barclays representatives and department supervisor, all individuals stated that it was against Barclays policy to provide the name of the third party credit reporting agency that supplies Barclays  with its verification information.      2 ) Their companywide policy to deny cardholders and myself the name of the service prevents everyone from being able to request a copy of their credit report from that agency and correct errors on it su ch as : "  Heigh on your Driver 's License '', " Previous Address 's '', " Date of Birth of F amily Member '', etc. Their failure to disclose their provider prevents consumers from exercising their right to challenge information in their credit reports which is a direct violation of the   Federal Credit Reporting Act.      3 ) Failure to provide the name of the service providing the information also violates the FCRA with respect to the right to copy of a credit report after a denial of credit or any adverse action. Prevention from completing a credit transaction on the website is a denial of credit. Prevention  from completing a balance transfer is a denial of credit. Prevent of accessing the website of a credit card and blocking the credit card in its entirely is a denial of credit. The reason for the denial is a vendor that is considered a  Credit Reporting Agency under the FCRA therefore, they have to provide a copy or at least the name of the supplying  organization so that consumers can correct incorrect information.     I recorded the call. I can provide a copy to the CFPB on request if it helps in their investigation.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation