Lloyds - told me account was closed, it's still active and now overdrawn

Callum1989

Hi there,

I hope someone on here can give some advice.

Four years ago I had an account open with Lloyds TSB, I had had it through my teenage years and had been given a £250 overdraft on it and sold the Platinum account. When I was 21 I cancelled it in person at a branch, I had a student account with Natwest so didn't need another one open that was sapping money on its 'Platinum' perks.

I hadn't even thought of this account in years, but my dad just forwarded some mail to me as it felt like it had a card in it. It had a new Lloyds card for the account I'd been told in the branch that I had closed. I called up to check the balance on it and found that it's £180 overdrawn. This money must have come out from the monthly payments over a period of years for their Platinum services - no money in that time will have ever gone into the account because I believed it to be closed.

I'm now stuck wondering whether I'm going to end up paying this £180 back, despite me being told the account had been closed?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I really can't afford to be paying for an account and services I had opted out of years ago.

I have submitted an email to Lloyd's as well and am waiting for their call, but I thought I'd check for advice while I wait.

Thanks very much for your advice in advance,

Callum

bod1467

Do you have anything in writing confirming the account closure?

Callum1989

I'm afraid not. Completely stupid of me, I know.

InsideInsurance

Callum1989 wrote: »

I'm afraid not. Completely stupid of me, I know.

Have you actually checked that the money owed is all purely in relation to the account servicing fee? £180 for four years of account servicing plus overdraft fees etc sounds very low.

Assuming it is purely account servicing then put a complain in writing to them giving the details about you having closed it in branch and as such since then never used the account nor any of its perks.

If it isnt, then you have more of an issue. Accounts sometimes can reopen when a reoccuring transaction comes through which you've forgotten to cancel/ update which can of cause be a yearly or even less frequent thing. I had a problem a couple of years ago as Google sent some money owed to me but sent it to my old Natwest account which had been closed for some time.

Hintza

Write to them stating what you have on here and then take it from there.

bris

You will have been getting letters about the account being overdrawn for years, why just bring it up now?

Callum1989

To answer the above - it's my family home address, not where I live now and as far as I know there weren't a lot of letters being sent there. The first I'd heard about it since closing it was when my dad sent me the card. It was still within its overdraft limit and it wasn't an unplanned overdraft.

Anyway, Lloyds looked at the history of the account and saw that I clearly hadn't been using it at all and thought that it was closed. They've refunded me the money that was taken from the account, closed it and are sending me a cheque for £50 to apologise. Great outcome and I was really impressed with their customer service, but thank God I found out the account was still open when I did or it could have been a lot more of a hassle.