For those who have had their Lloyd's fee waiver removed

savers_united

I see there are numerous posts on here regarding the fee waiver removal from Lloyd's Gold and Platinum accounts. 

I was also one of those effected after holding the account for over 20 years, always kept a healthy amount in my account and only on 2 or 3 occasions made use of the included insurances.

Whilst grateful for the length of time that Lloyd's allowed the waiver to continue, I still felt that to suddenly stop this waiver and introduce the full fee did not recognise the loyalty of the customer, and not forgetting over those 20+ years I have maintained in excess of £6k in the account, at times when IR were at 2-3% on many other accounts and the fee at the time around £16 per month, so Lloyd's did make money for large parts of those 20 years. Only in recent times with lower IR I guess its started to cost them, but still they are making £2bn profit so can't be to bad for them.

Anyhow I contacted lloyds and they are adamant that the fee is being introduced, the guy understood why I was upset but also explained the rational for the charge being introduced. 

I asked for a complaint to be raised at which point he tried everything to stop it, offering to extend my benefits for a few more months. 
I refused the offer and the complaint raised, I am not hopeful that the complaint will be successful and I feel the decision is made, but if everyone who has been effected raises a complaint then it will not reflect well on Lloyd's when banking complaints are compiled, and its the best way for loyal customers to get their voices heard.

So I say get your complaints in, you never know if there are enough of us they may have a rethink. 

WillPS

Any need for this to be a new thread? Several existing ones on this same subject.

eskbanker

WillPS said:

Any need for this to be a new thread? Several existing ones on this same subject.

Presumably OP feels that their specific call to action is sufficiently different from the threads that just moan about the change, but realistically it's futile to try to rally support in sufficient numbers to make any meaningful difference, given Lloyds Banking Group's thousand complaints per day....

Thrugelmir

savers_united said:

So I say get your complaints in, you never know if there are enough of us they may have a rethink. 

Make no effect at all.  Lloyds will have a commercial rationale behind the decuision. I doubt that they will care if you vote with your feet and take your business elsewhere. 

eskbanker

Thrugelmir said:

savers_united said:

So I say get your complaints in, you never know if there are enough of us they may have a rethink. 

Make no effect at all.  Lloyds will have a commercial rationale behind the decuision. I doubt that they will care if you vote with your feet and take your business elsewhere. 

And it always seems naive to believe that institutions won't have anticipated negative reactions and planned for them - it's obviously not a surprise that affected customers won't be thrilled about such changes, just like any other reduction in product benefits, including lower interest rates, etc, so the idea that they'll suddenly slap their collective foreheads and say "oh, people don't like this, we didn't see that coming, we'd better reverse the change" is just laughable....

callum9999

You don't come across as a very loyal customer to me! "Give me free stuff or I'm going to make a complaint and attempt to damage your brand"

I think when people say they're "loyal", they actually just mean they've been there a long time. If you're not making them money and there's no realistic prospect of that changing, I don't see why they'd particularly care whether you've been there 5 minutes or 5 decades.

savers_united

Thrugelmir said:

savers_united said:

So I say get your complaints in, you never know if there are enough of us they may have a rethink. 

Make no effect at all.  Lloyds will have a commercial rationale behind the decuision. I doubt that they will care if you vote with your feet and take your business elsewhere. 

You may well be right and I know the chances are very slim, but the other option is not great either, say nothing and just accept it, at least by raising a complaint you are rasing your views on the decision. I would and have not raised complaints previously for increases because I accept that phone bills, gas bills, council tax etc will go up over time, the difference here is that Lloyd's offered early adopters of these accounts a waiver that they are suddenly no longer prepared to do. 

I along with many others challenged HP when they tried to start charging us for free ink for life, that ended in a U Turn by HP and now myself and many thousands of other HP customers continue to get free ink. 

eskbanker

savers_united said:

I along with many others challenged HP when they tried to start charging us for free ink for life, that ended in a U Turn by HP and now myself and many thousands of other HP customers continue to get free ink. 

If Lloyds ever expressly promised that the fee waiver was 'for life' then that would put a different complexion on the current situation - did they?

savers_united

callum9999 said:

You don't come across as a very loyal customer to me! "Give me free stuff or I'm going to make a complaint and attempt to damage your brand"

I think when people say they're "loyal", they actually just mean they've been there a long time. If you're not making them money and there's no realistic prospect of that changing, I don't see why they'd particularly care whether you've been there 5 minutes or 5 decades.

I say loyal has having been with lloyds for over 30 years and held this particular account for over 20, through times of higher IRs and cheaper insurance elsewhere I stuck with Lloyds, through the financial crisis and then having purchased many other investment products through lloyds, even owning Lloyd's shares and opening accounts for my children.

There have been many offers sent my way to move current account and get rewarded with a cash payment, but I stuck with Lloyd's because they were honouring their commitment to the waiver, it's them who have broken that agreement. 

It's not about damaging a brand as that would be counterproductive being a share holder, it's a way of expressing that of the many decisions lloyds have taken over the years this one is a poor decision, the costs involved are fairly small and just feels like penny pinching. 

[Deleted User]

Akin to what others have said, Banks aren't loyal to you, you shouldn't be loyal to them.

The old Lloyds Gold Service was intended for affluent customers and is probably more akin to a Premier account now. They used to break even with higher interest rates to fund the fee wavier, so I guess each will be running at a loss.

They will have done a calculation that some will upgrade to Premier/Private, some will downgrade to a free product and some will leave.

callum9999

savers_united said:

callum9999 said:

You don't come across as a very loyal customer to me! "Give me free stuff or I'm going to make a complaint and attempt to damage your brand"

I think when people say they're "loyal", they actually just mean they've been there a long time. If you're not making them money and there's no realistic prospect of that changing, I don't see why they'd particularly care whether you've been there 5 minutes or 5 decades.

I say loyal has having been with lloyds for over 30 years and held this particular account for over 20, through times of higher IRs and cheaper insurance elsewhere I stuck with Lloyds, through the financial crisis and then having purchased many other investment products through lloyds, even owning Lloyd's shares and opening accounts for my children.

There have been many offers sent my way to move current account and get rewarded with a cash payment, but I stuck with Lloyd's because they were honouring their commitment to the waiver, it's them who have broken that agreement. 

It's not about damaging a brand as that would be counterproductive being a share holder, it's a way of expressing that of the many decisions lloyds have taken over the years this one is a poor decision, the costs involved are fairly small and just feels like penny pinching. 

So you're claiming that you identified better options from other banks yet decided to stay with Lloyds specifically because you have a sense of loyalty to a capitalist business that exists solely to enrich its shareholders? That seems somewhat unlikely (almost incomprehensible in fact!) - are you sure it wasn't just the convenience?