Postal address if not living in the UK

Section62

EasyRelax said:

My £0 balance is unlikely to go negative, since I have had the account for a long time, and it doesn’t have any costs. The only way for that to happen is if someone steals my identity and uses the account without my knowledge. I deem this risk minimal, but not 0%.

Not even a fee for tracing you if they can't contact you?

Another factor I should have mentioned earlier is that if you are currently using a mail service, if you stop paying for that then what happens to any post from the bank?  Will they just bin it, or return it to sender?  If you aren't paying them any more then I doubt it will be the latter.

Unless you proactively tell the bank to stop mailing you (e.g. by closing your account) then there's a potential security risk of your banking correspondence ending up with who knows who.

born_again

EasyRelax said:

My £0 balance is unlikely to go negative, since I have had the account for a long time, and it doesn’t have any costs. The only way for that to happen is if someone steals my identity and uses the account without my knowledge. I deem this risk minimal, but not 0%.

Unless the bank starts to charge a fee for the account. With no valid Uk address you would never know. 👍

EasyRelax

Section62 said:

EasyRelax said:

My £0 balance is unlikely to go negative, since I have had the account for a long time, and it doesn’t have any costs. The only way for that to happen is if someone steals my identity and uses the account without my knowledge. I deem this risk minimal, but not 0%.

Not even a fee for tracing you if they can't contact you?

Another factor I should have mentioned earlier is that if you are currently using a mail service, if you stop paying for that then what happens to any post from the bank?  Will they just bin it, or return it to sender?  If you aren't paying them any more then I doubt it will be the latter.

Unless you proactively tell the bank to stop mailing you (e.g. by closing your account) then there's a potential security risk of your banking correspondence ending up with who knows who.

As long as I don't have any outstanding debts, I don't think the bank will go out of its way to contact me, charge me for it, then snowball this small fee into a big debt. But that's just my opinion. I think the standard procedure is that if there is no activity on the account, they just send out a notice, and if I don't respond within a set amount of time, they simply close the account automatically. I remember receiving such a thing in the past.

But I get your point, I'll contact the bank, and close the account.

The mailing service will return the mail to the sender if I don't pay for my subscription. I asked them, that's what they said. Then I googled it, and what I found is that it's a Royal Mail service, and it's free of charge. Anyone can return any mail to the sender if it's delivered to the wrong address, or the address doesn't belong to the recipient anymore.

john1488786

eDicky said:

Some UK banks allow you to keep your account if you move to an overseas address, some don't, yours apparently being one of the latter. 

^^^This. Had no problems getting First Direct (via phone) and Nationwide (via online banking ) to change my 'home address' to my overseas address in UAE. Though FD made it clear that if i closed my current account then I wouldn't be able to apply for another current until I returned to Blighty.