In the early hours of Christmas Day, I discovered that Lloyds Bank had changed the address on my current account without my authorisation and to an address where I have never lived. Over the following ten days I had about five different conversations with various parts of the bank in an effort to get it changed back, variously being told that it could take up to eight weeks for them to respond and that staff in the branch could not talk to me as I was not a priority compared to customers currently at the window.
On numerous occasions, I was promised that someone at the Bexleyheath branch would ring me back. The manager of the Welling sub-branch even promised that she would ring me back after 4pm that day. No one ever did.
At the beginning of January the bank sent my monthly statement to the address it had unilaterally decided was now mine, despite the fact I had told them it wasn't. Shortly afterwards, I received a letter from Vodafone about a mobile phone contract I've never held. I then finally managed to speak to someone at Bexleyheath who was able to change the address back and who put in place an identity theft package, which she said the bank would pay for subject to authorisation by the manager.
I subsequently received a letter saying that I would be paying for it, starting in February. I've never received any further explanation of events.
Last Thursday I noticed that a scheduled payment had not been made from my account. I phoned Lloyds call centre and was told that they could see no explanation for this, as I had funds and the problem must have been with the payee. I contacted the payee and paid by credit card. The same thing happened again over the weekend. Again I phoned up and was told that there was no obvious explanation for this and I should speak to my branch this morning.
I phone the branch and as usual was transferred to the call centre as they were not answering. I eventually got through to the complaints people, who confirmed that Bexleyheath had blocked payments from my account, meaning among other things that my mortgage won't be paid. They need to speak to Bexleyheath before they can do anything about this. Surprise, surprise, they can't get hold of them either. If I don't hear from the branch by 3pm, they want me to ring the call centre again.
I'm confidently expecting a letter telling me that I am late paying the mortgage, which of course is with Lloyds.
Now the thing is I've dealt with a lot of people over this and apart from the fact that only the woman at Bexleyheath has taken any ownership of the problem, I have no complaints about them. They are all doing their best, but are tied up in knots by their systems, which it still appears created the problem in the first place.
I just thought I'd share this in case anyone is thinking of opening an account with them. I've been with Lloyds for 25 years but on this occasion I'm gobsmacked by how useless they have been.
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LOL
couldn't you sleep waiting for Santa..:o)
1. Has anyone been able to tell you why they changed the address on your account?
2. Why don't you physically go into the Bexleyheath branch and demand to see someone instead of ringing numerous times and getting nowhere?
Trying to open an account couldn't have been harder. 3 visits to 3 different branches, 3 times proved ID, several phone calls to their helpline, hours and effort wasted. By the end, i have a letter confirming my account, i have successfully used the online banking, i have a bank card from them. Then, as the end of the month approaches i want access to the big cheque i'd paid in. No. Everything frozen- can't have my money - and all services suspended. After complaining all of Friday afternoon in the manager's office, i eventually leave with my money in cash- £50 and £20 notes, together the size of a brick, walking around Lewisham looking for the post-office..
Evidently i was a high risk transaction...but it had cleared and IT WAS A GOVERNMENT cheque. This is a bank, a recent beneficiary of government money after taking too many risks with other people's money, now refusing to clear my cheque- a government cheque on the grounds that I might be committing a fraud!! Shame on them.. They even tried to call the solicitor who's name was on the letter- couldn't get her, so said 'sorry, it'll be monday now'.. Then i spent the whole of friday afternoon in the company of the branch manager getting it sorted. Like you found, every step of the way, the staff were decent with me and straight forward. It's their processes, as i kept reminding myself. Especially those used by the anti-fraud team. On the contrary it seems the Lloyds team you've encounetered don't seem to take fraud seriously enough. For me it was totally OTT and ironic in the present economic climate.
My advice- sit in the bank until they sort it, asking for the manager every 5/10 minutes. It definitely shouldn't be like that but it might be the only way. Then complain later. Banking ombudsmen perhaps, or the papers. I'm also considering wikileaks.org
1. No - they claim not to have an audit trail that tells them who did and when, either.
2. It's not been very practical, although I plan to do this tomorrow.
I cant believe that. You have to fill out a form just to wipe your arse these days. They must have a date of when the address was changed, then they could find paperwork or a recorded telephone call of the request.
Go in and tell them you want to invest your £2 Million Lottery win. See how quickly they find someone to talk to you then.
Had a cheque ( a cheque numbered and used some 3 years previous) cleared an account written out to a Mr P. Taker .... I kid you not
I can believe it. And that is usually why the Bank closes rank and tells the customer nothing. Not exactly good P R is it?
It's possible that their fraud dept has got hold of this...they aren't duty bound to tell you, as they might be making an investigation of some sort....I had this happen with Nat West a few years back and it took them several weeks before they volunteered the information.
In the meantime I closed the account mind you and then called round to the address that had been given by the fraud dept when they questioned me over the phone as they wanted to know if I had any connection with that address ....it was a dodgy council flat in Brixton of all places.Looking back it was quite a risky thing to do but in those days I didn't give a fook!
I knocked on the door and went back two or three times but with no luck....I eventually squirted super glue in the door lock and heaved a brick through the windscreen of the blokes car that some neighbours told me lived there.It was a drugs den by all accounts....and the neighbours told me they were utter low lifes and that he was in custody waiting to go to court.
It might be worth asking them if somenoe has attempted to do this in your case....not that they'll neccessarily know(the branch staff that is) or be prepaird to tell you.
Don't reccommend the super glue and brick thing though R....LOL!!
''send a fax''......are they living in 1989 !
Apparently, they've been writing to the address I never had, despite the fact I've told them it wasn't correct, and because the letters were returned they froze the account. The branch says it was nothing to do with them, even though the complaints department says they are the only people who can resolve it.
Absolute shambles.
Set yourself up another current account, a no frills one that demands no monthly fee and use that as leverage. Short of violence I find it nigh on impossible to get sense into these people or to get them to carry out simple requests.
I do all my banking online as is the way nowadays and it is easy and no morons (except me) to screw things up.
Along with councils this bank is the hardest establishment to deal with
Got a letter mid Jan basically saying "Thank you for your letter of complaint.....",
I've sent 8 "offical letters", 16 e-mails, 6 letters, made 24 phonecalls................
They will "contact me within 4 weeks"............
I shut my account with Lloyds a few years back for most of the reasons already stated here.
Haven't chizzed the taxpayer, and even refunded £200 to my credit card last week after I wrote to them four years late about some old charges I thought were unjust. Bless' em.
Have dealt with lloyds before - nightmare, and I will never use them for personal or business purposes ever again.
Rick, may well be worth checking out the Banking Ombudsman's site or the BBA, though you've almost certainly done that already!!
We're considering moving banks (yes we're with Lloyds as well). I deal with the Co-op at work and I'm impressed with them, although we don't have a local branch. Any other recommendations?
My sister works for Lloyds as a PA, has done for 20 years. She has recovered from cancer but would like to take redundancy and find something closer to Eltham. Lloyds say they need to lose thousands of workers, yet they cannot put her on the list. They actually manage to have a shortage of people to fill vacancies in PA roles in London, or so they told my sister.
They seem like complete and utter knobheads, but hand on heart can anyone be sure that any of the big banks are consistently better? Mind you the Co-op sounds like a good shout.
The bank had shut and I had no opportunity to do rectify it on the day. So I bust my overdraft limit and got a daily penalty charge.
I went into the branch to rectify the situation the next day and to get an explanation. It seems that they credited the £200 three times by mistake but only took it out once! Being a busy bee, I didn't notice it. It's a heavily used account. So without notifying me and as it turns out, without notifying the branch, they took the £200 back on the last day of the month. Did I get an apology - no! Apparently it was my fault for not noticing, not theirs for the mistake, not noticing the mistake for three weeks and then taking the money back without telling me.
Not surprisingly I was not a happy bunny. I insisted they refund the penalty charge and put a note on the account to that effect. It was reluctantly agreed "because I had not gone over my limit any other time in the last year". Not because of their mistake!
I have been a customer of Lloyds since 1978.