Response from Lloyds… and my response to that!

Seems like a bit of a fob-off…

Dear Mosh,

Thanks for your e-mail about the payments that left your account.

I’ve performed an audit of your online activity and can see that on the same afternoon as you logged on, you tried to set up a payment but this was not confirmed successfully. This is why, when you went back to your ‘Transfers and payments’ page there was no record of the payment. You had not entered your password to confirm the transaction. If you had done this it would’ve displayed the amount due to be paid and the date it was due to leave your account.

Pending transactions are not erased from the ‘Transfers and Payments’ page until the money has left your account.

If you check the entries on your statement you will see that only one of the transactions that left your account was an Internet Banking bill payment. You will see this by looking at the ‘Transaction Type’ column.

We cannot discuss any charges applied by the Nationwide, however if you’d like to speak to someone about the possibility of having any charges rescinded on your account with us, then you should contact either Phonebank or your branch.

Phonebank can be contacted on 0845 3000 000 (00 44 2077 857 654, from overseas) and are available 24 hours a day.

You can find contact details for our branches by clicking the link below:

http://www.lloydstsb.com/branch_locator/search.asp

If there’s anything else we can help you with, please let us know. Alternatively, to obtain an instant answer, why not try using our Online Help Centre at http://lloydstsb.creativevirtual.com/LloydsTSB/? It answers over 90% of our customers’ questions.

Many Thanks

Not good enough…

Thanks for the reply but there is definitely an inaccuracy there. I do
recall starting to process a new transaction and failing to enter the
password. The reason for this was when I logged in and looked, no
money had left my account to pay off my Nationwide card. I thought I’d
set up a transaction some weeks ago to do just this, but on looking…
nothing was listed in the Bills and Payments section. So I started
adding such a payment.

Then I realised that if I did this, the money would arrive with the
credit card company 3-4 days too late and I’d be hammered for
interest. Instead, I cancelled the transaction I was inputting and
made the card bill payment from my Nationwide account (knocking it
overdrawn, but ensuring the payment took place same day) and arranged
a payment from my LloydsTSB account to my Nationwide account to bring
the Nationwide one back into credit. A smaller financial “hit” than
the perceived credit card fee.

Hence imagine my surprise and annoyance a few days later when I
noticed that my credit card was in … well… credit. The payment it
turns out I *had* arranged from Lloyds TSB had existed and had gone
through as well as the “replacement” one I’d made from the Nationwide
– hence two large withdrawals from Lloyds, one of which wasn’t needed.

I can completely and utterly promise you that when I first logged in
at the start of this palaver, there were no details of pending
transactions for the Nationwide Card listed on the Bills and Payments
section. It was blank, insinuating that no such payment had been set
up – otherwise I’d not have arranged the other payments (from and to
my Nationwide current account).

This is the issue I have. The information presented to me when I
logged in – no pending transaction and no debit from my account – led
me to believe that I’d forgotten to set up the transaction. Hence why
I want to ensure that I am no charged any fees as a result of going
withdrawn. I can only go by the information I am given by Lloyds and
that information, in this case, was incorrect.

Unfortunately, I do not have a phone bank account and walking into my
branch is somewhat impossible as I’m in Nice and won’t be back in the
UK until October as I am engaging in a charity walk from Monaco to
Newcastle!

Thanks