Advice please

Graystreet

Hi,

Only my second post on this board but I have been reading avidly.

We've just made out first payment to Stepchange, the relief is massive..!

We changed our current account to Lloyds as part of this process. I have just read that Bank of Scotland and Sainsburys Bank, 2 of our creditors, are associated with Lloyds. Does this give them the right to access our Lloyds account to take their payments?

Any advice gratefully received as I'm panicking at the moment and Stepchange are closed for the weekend....

Thanks for reading.

sourcrates

Potentially yes they could, its known as "right of offset" even though you are in an agreement they would be within there rights to do so legally, if they will or not I don't know, you are always best off banking where you don't have debts so this doesn't become an issue.

fermi

Please see on the main site ---> Setting Off Rules: DON'T bank where you’ve got debts

As it says there, in most cases they won't set off between "brands" in the same group, but personally I would not take even the small risk. It would screw your finances too badly if you were the exception.

seanavfc92

As far as I'm aware, the OFT have stated that it is unfair to have the right of offset within a banking group, e.g. Lloyds can't offset a Halifax account.

rizla_king

seanavfc92 wrote: »

As far as I'm aware, the OFT have stated that it is unfair to have the right of offset within a banking group, e.g. Lloyds can't offset a Halifax account.

Where do the OFT say this?

seanavfc92

rizla_king wrote: »

Where do the OFT say this?

I've been trying to find it for the last 10 mins!

Graystreet

Thank you for the replies, looks like I'll be moving accounts again...

Oh dear, everything just seemed to be coming together

Jason_Bourne_2

I've just completed my DMP with payplan after almost 4 years.

I had and overdraft and a credit card with the bank of Scotland, both defaulted and the total owed was around £3000. My current account was obviously no longer available to use but I had a joint account with them also.
I was probably taking a chance but I kept all my banking with them without a single problem. They never once threatened to take money from my account to offset the debt and I kept to the agreed payments.

I even managed to negotiate full and final settlement on my credit card with them even though they would have know I had thousands sitting in my account (for all settlements). They could have said no and just took the full amount but didn't.

The safest thing to do would be to open an account which isn't linked to any if your creditors but I would be confident that if you make all your payments on time that they wouldn't dip into your current account.