Current account closed in error

xylophone

It was closed, they tell me, entirely by accident and they admit they are at fault. There was no notification to me either before or afterwards. There was nearly £900 in the account. I find it amazing that they have no checks in place to ensure they are not making such mistakes and they won't give me details of how this happened or who did it.

You have made a formal complaint - if you are not satisfied, take it to the FOS to which body the bank will have to make full disclosure?

For the moment, damage limitation should be your guide - see post 3 -presumably you/your wife have other bank accounts that you can access in an emergency? If not, now is the time to do something about it.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/compare-best-bank-accounts

takman

johnoz wrote: »

No, I've not withheld info! This was a very active account. It was closed, they tell me, entirely by accident and they admit they are at fault. There was no notification to me either before or afterwards. There was nearly £900 in the account. I find it amazing that they have no checks in place to ensure they are not making such mistakes and they won't give me details of how this happened or who did it.

Between us, my wife and I have over £120k of ISAs still with them, but I now have so little confidence in their procedures that we will look at transferring these to another provider ... but I want to get the current account sorted first.

Those ISA's will be earning a very poor interest rate. Going forward you should look at the savings guides on this site and opening 3%, 4%, 5% and 6% interest paying accounts to get the most from this money.

Also this would mean you have money spread between many different accounts, so if anything happens like this in future then you wouldn't have any trouble accessing your money.

Keeping all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea!.

vet8

johnoz wrote: »

No, I've not withheld info! This was a very active account. It was closed, they tell me, entirely by accident and they admit they are at fault. There was no notification to me either before or afterwards. There was nearly £900 in the account. I find it amazing that they have no checks in place to ensure they are not making such mistakes and they won't give me details of how this happened or who did it.

You have my sympathy entirely. I have had virtually the same thing happen to a small business account with TSB. I have posted elsewhere about that, but what gets me is that on the 3 occasions I have phoned them they have been unable to tell me why the account was closed, they even seemed astonished themselves as there was over £400 in it. Now we have to open a new business account from scratch as if we were new applicants with all the bu**erring about with photo ID and company accounts, paperwork etc. This has taken a lot of time already and will take me even more to sort out and like you it was all the fault of the bank.

jennyjj

johnoz wrote: »

I went to check my account balances online, but my current account was no longer shown. Suspecting an IT error, I called up the bank. After umming and ahhing they admitted they had accidentally closed my current account which has been open 35 years!

Name and shame ???

Harveys_2

In July M&S closed my regular saver by mistake. Without asking they offered me £20 for my in convenience. I declined saying I will let the FOS deal with. Advisor had a quick chat with his manager and then offered to credit my current account with £100. Simple.

As for you that has to be worth £250 at least?! The day off work, the stress, the worry etc etc...

Good luck.

Plus

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

The question often asked is "how long have you been with your bank", not how long have you had a specific account. Even when the latter is expressly asked, I always interpret it as the former, as accounts come and go. I do, however, have a continuous relationship with them, going back a similar number of years to you.

The field on credit files is 'average age of credit account'. If you look at your credit history it says when a specific account was opened. Therefore if you close account A and open account B at the same bank, the clock restarts. That could be bad for credit history purposes, especially if you have one ancient 'anchor' account and then more recent churn (eg stoozing).

That said, there's two ways to cause them pain:

Close your account. This will show up in the 'XX thousand customers left us last month' statistics, which give a manager some concerns.

Keep your account open, with a standing order to transfer in and out 1p every so often. Sign up to weekly paper statements, every postal marketing list going, and just cost them as much as possible.
They probably won't notice for years, and you can happily be an unproductive customer. (Even better, make some innocuous typo in your address so you can easily filter out the junk - like adding extra punctuation)

johnoz

Awaiting outcome of formal complaint, will post with result when I hear, and also name'n'shame...

Keep_pedalling

Have you done anything about that ridiculous amount of cash you have sitting earning next to nothing yet?

If that is savings being kept for the long term you should be looking at transferring a good portion of that to a S&S ISA.

johnoz

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

Have you done anything about that ridiculous amount of cash you have sitting earning next to nothing yet?

If that is savings being kept for the long term you should be looking at transferring a good portion of that to a S&S ISA.

Who said I had a ridiculous amount of money earning next to nothing? The money I referred to was in longer term ISAs, and has been earning interest well over the rate of inflation.

johnoz

takman wrote: »

Those ISA's will be earning a very poor interest rate. Going forward you should look at the savings guides on this site and opening 3%, 4%, 5% and 6% interest paying accounts to get the most from this money.

Also this would mean you have money spread between many different accounts, so if anything happens like this in future then you wouldn't have any trouble accessing your money.

Keeping all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea!.

Who said I had all my eggs in one basket? We have other savings in accounts paying pretty well (but limited total amounts, eg regular savings getting 4% and 5%), the full £20k in 2 Santander current accounts, and several more.

See earlier note about the ISAs, they are not too bad at all, actually, as we move them around as necessary - ensuring we get the best interest we can find on these, they are needed as our ordinary savings at better rates max out above the £1000 tax allowance.

Thank you, but I do read the savings advice on this website (and in the forums) regularly.