Store Cards - Wallis, Burton, New Look & Laura Ashley

bigspender01_2

I lost my wife last year and I am finally getting round to sorting the "non urgent" bits of admin, todays task being closing loyalty card accounts and store cards etc.

I have found old statements for the following cards:

Laura Ashley (dated 2002)
Burton (dated 2003)
New Look (dated 2003)
Wallis (dated 2007)

So they are all very old and all statements have £0 balance.

They all seem to have been run by GE Capital Bank or GE Money as that's on all the payment slips.

None of the phone numbers work and a bit of googling leads me to believe GE Capital Bank is no longer in existence.

So my question: will these accounts have been closed or do I need to investigate further....and does it actually matter anyway?

MorningcoffeeIV

GE Capital accounts were mostly sold to NewDay, via a short spell with Santander.

But it doesn't matter. I would just leave them.

Will_Riker

My condolences on your loss.

Firstly, if the cards are that old and had zero balance, there's actually very little to worry about.  It's quite likely that the accounts will have been closed by the provider anyway after a long period of inactivity.

But a bit of Googling seems to indicate that GE Capital was bought by Santander.  So I guess you could potentially give them a call to see what the score is?

Sorry, as a new user I can't post URL links, but if you go to the GE Capital website, there's a contact area for former UK customers.

bigspender01_2

Thanks.

Found the link on the GE site which says the storecards were sold to Santander and also a phone number.

I rang that and spoke to a lady who put me through to someone else.  All she could find was old Santander bank accounts that she told me I closed last year...which obviously I did.

I explained to her these are old storecards, not originally Santander accounts but that the website says they were sold to Santander.  She just didnt get it, saying they would be nothing to do with Santander.

So I then tried NewDay and the guy I spoke to seemed to at least understand what I was on about.  Gave him the postcode and then all 4 card numbers and nothing came up on his systems.

So as suggested above, I will just leave them, in the knowledge that I tried.

MalMonroe

Hello, I'd like to add my condolences.

You really have tried - but it seems that nobody knows, or wants to know anything about the accounts, which are very old now anyway. 

I think it would be safe to leave them and perhaps dispose of the statements - with care, obviously. 

All the best to you.