ThinkMoney account eligible for Packaged Bank Account reclaim?

deanovillan

Hi.

I was hoping f someone could help me as I'm a bit unsure as to whether my ThinkMoney bank account classes as a packaged bank account and therefore if I am able to claim for a refund on my fee's?

All the info I am reading about packaged bank accounts mention holiday insurance, car insurance and other services included in the account.

Mine has none of this, yest I do get charged a monthly fee and do believe I may have been mis-sold it.

Essentially back in 2010 I was struggling financially. I filled out a query on moneysupermarket.com and within minutes got a call back from a Debt Management company called Gregory Pennington.

hey advised me to go onto a debt management plan and negotiate with all my creditors but to do so they said I needed to set up a new bank account and the only one I would be eligable for was Think Banking (now Think Money) as I wouldn't be able to hold a bank account with anyone I owed money to.

The charge for the Think Money account at the time was around £12 per month. It's currently £17.50.

I've now successfully paid off all my creditors, but I still have this Think Money current account that I am paying for.

I am currently looking at opening a basic bank account with Barclays or Co-Op and switching across as I don't benefit at all from this paid for account.

My question is, once switched can I reclaim my Think Money fees?

Is it a packaged bank account? (No insurances or anything included)

Was I mis-sold? I believe I was, but trying to prove it???

Any advice would be very welcome.

Thanks
Dean

[Deleted User]

You were not mis-sold if this account was set up specifically to administer your debt management programme.

I'm not sure on what basis you plan to complain it was mis-sold, it's not a packaged account.

Nothing to stop you now cancelling the account if your DMP is complete.

Probably get more comprehensive advice on the Bankruptcy board:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=136

deanovillan

I guess my reason for thinking it was mis-sold is I was told I had to have it in order to proceed with the debt management plan, and yet I've since found out I could have had a basic account with someone like Co-Op or Barclay's free of charge.

I believe Gregory Pennington and ThinkMoney are owned by the same company so they were obviously just trying to make more money out of me.

However, as dodgy as it sounds and despite the fact I think it was mis-sold having done a bit more research it doesn't look like this type of account is eligible for a reclaim as it's not classed as a 'packaged' account, it's a 'managed account' so seems I'm out of luck. :-(

I will still be switching to a free account though.