Does your bank annoy you? Feel like you are serving a prison sentence for something you didn't do? Welcome to LLoydsTsb!

Incompetence, harassment, lies .... It’s all in this opinion, a glossary of reasons to stay as far away from this bank as you possibly can, and I must apologize in advance for the sheer length of it.

Our nightmare began just two short years ago...

I had been a customer of LloydsTsb from my sixteenth birthday, of course back then they were just TSB and I never had a problem with them, not one that couldn't be resolved with a quick phone call to my Bank Manager anyway.

My Bank Manager was something else, most people complain about theirs but honestly I couldn't fault him. When my marriage broke up and I began the difficult task of bringing up my children alone he helped me out, financially he bent the rules for me, and many times I just popped in to see him and we had a chat about nothing, he was an angel.

When I met and married my husband he was one of the first to congratulate me, but unfortunately at around the same time another marriage was in the offing...the merger of LLoyds and TSB, a match made in Hell.

My Branch was closed, my account moved and a different manager was appointed, but all seemed to run well, we weren't having any problems and I was assured of the same services.

It all began to go wrong when my husband had a heart attack at work, it was only minor but he was put on sick leave, where he remained until he was made redundant due to ill health.

Obviously this created a few problems, along with the current account we had two small loan accounts, I began to worry about where the money was going to come from to pay these, so I contacted my branch manager and set up an appointment to see him.

Both loans had been taken out with payment protection for just this reason, but it emerged from our conversation that as one of the loans was in my name only we couldn't claim the loan protection, even though my husband's income was the only source of income we had. They did agree however to halve the payments for 'the time being', as a gesture.

They could however help us with the other loan and promised to send us the forms on the post.

At this point this opinion changes slightly into a diary type form, just because it makes it easier to read and maybe easier to understand. So to recap, we are waiting for forms for one loan, the other had been halved.

May 2000:
My Full loan amount was taken.
My Husband's full loan amount was taken.
No forms arrived, they were requested again.

June 2000:
My Full loan amount was taken.
My husband's full loan amount was taken, but whoopee, the forms arrived, they were filled in sent back, and payment was promised for next month, this came as a great relief as most of my husband's redundancy money had been spent already covering the loans and our mortgage.

July - October 2000:
My full loan amount was taken every month, despite letters being sent back and forth for months, to various departments. Eventually, we got an apology and my 'half' loan amount in writing due to be taken in November.
My Husband’s loan protection was paid, unfortunately, 2 weeks after the loan was taken out each month, which made the account incur charges.

Numerous phone calls and letters later we were told that the dates could not be changed of either payment or collection, but they would not charge us fees and would honour Direct debits during these periods.
Needless to say this didn't happen.

November 2000
Husband's loan Paid in/out
My loan not taken at all?

December 2000
Husband's loan Paid in/out
My loan not taken at all? Again!
Telephoned Lloydstsb, it's Christmas and they are all on holiday.

January 2001
Husband's loan Paid in/out
My loan taken, 7 times???
I immediately telephoned Lloydstsb, apparently our account had now been sent to collections, I therefore phoned the collections department and was informed I was behind on my loan payments. Well of course I was, they hadn't taken it from my account. To add insult to injury the computer had made an error in the amount it had taken out, and taken too many payments.

What was truly unbelievable was that they couldn't pay it back in until the following month, they told me that they would extend my overdraft for a month to cover this, with no charges.
They did not.

February 2001:
Husband's loan paid in/out
My loan not taken? Here we go again,
No money was paid back, as previously promised.

At this point I was at the end of my tether, I stormed into the branch, demanded to see the manager and didn't leave until the money was in my account, my loan had been taken for that month and all the charges built up had been re-imbursed.

It took them 2 hours to do this, why couldn't they have done it in the first place?

March 2001:
Husband's loan paid in/out
My loan not taken.
Now forgive me for thinking they are not a good bank at this point.
Many phone calls later, my loan was taken from the account.

April 2001;
My loan taken, hooray!!!!
Husbands Loan taken hooooraaay!!!
£150.00 taken from my loan account???? Aaarggghh!
Apparently I told them to do this, what the hell for? I have just spent six months trying to get them to take the money and now I am requesting it back?

May 2001
£150.00 paid back into my loan, (wonder where it had really been for a month?)
Husband's loan paid in/out.
Husband's Payment protection ran out this month.
My loan not taken.

BACK TO SQUARE ONE.

Now you may be thinking at this point why not just give up and close the account, right? Well it wasn't quite as simple as that, my husband was still out of work at this point, we had accumulated a few debts here and there and our credit rating was shot.

We did try to apply for different accounts but they were refused, we were well and truly stuck.

To add to this my husband's heart attack had initially been due to stress, this bank were not helping at all, imagine how he must have felt with all this going on and him not able to do a damn thing about it. He was trying to retrain for a different career at this point, the stress was getting to him all over again, so I decided to take charge of it all, to lessen the strain, unfortunately it was the wrong move to make. Back to the Diary....

MAY 2001
This month they managed to 'lose' £30.00 from my account, they don't know where it has gone and they suggested that I look for it!? This £30.00 has sent me overdrawn, I do not have the money to put it back in, and to date it has cost me £88.00 in charges for returned direct debits. It is not money that I have withdrawn, it just appears on one statement, and it's gone on the next, no DD, no cheque no., nothing, it's just not there.

Next I received an abrupt telephone call from them; they have decided too close my account. They were unhappy with the way it was running and have decided, without consulting me, that I would be better off without an account. The unreasonable witch on the other end of the phone told me that they would be closing the account that very day.

Oh Yes! This makes my life so much easier, now I have to get another account elsewhere (which was impossible anyway), transfer all my standing orders and direct debits, re-issue cheques to people, rearrange my child benefit arrangements, etc., and all before my next direct debit is due in 2 days. Thanks a lot!

JUNE 2001
I have managed to open an account with another bank, but only as a signatory on my father's account. This means that although I can issue cheques and withdraw money I cannot pay anything into that account with our names, everything has to be in my father's name. This makes life awkward to say the least; everybody I deal with has had to change everything into my father's name.

This makes managing my finances very difficult, if not impossible, although I am just grateful at this point that I had someone that would do this for me.

My LloydsTsb account has not been closed and I have had no letters to tell me what is happening. There are charges accruing daily because of the initial £30.00 that I went overdrawn, and also because of 2 cheques I had written before they were to close my account. These two cheques totaling £196.00 were honoured but they 'bounced' a further cheque for £3.50? Why? Because they can then charge me £55.00 for the privilege.

Oh, and I did manage to receive a bank statement detailing all the charges they will be applying to my account next month. These, added to the amounts I do actually owe, total an astounding £600.00.

They are harassing us daily for the monies owed, despite the fact that we have offered to pay back the money on two separate occasions, they have refused this and want the full amount.

At this point I decided to send them a letter stating I would not be paying these charges, but again we are happy to pay off the loans and current account on a monthly basis, as this is all we can afford. We also asked them to refrain from telephoning us and to put all correspondence in writing.

A week on and they still haven't closed my account or replied to my letter, the charges are piling up, and today I received a new cheque book from them! I think there might be a slight communication problem somewhere!!

Regardless I have been paying money into my account to try and clear the £166.00 that I owe, (£196.00 less the £30.00 that they still cannot find)

JULY 2001
Stress has taken its toll on me this time; Sadly, I have just miscarried our fifth child. The very day I came out of hospital LloydsTsb were back on the telephone harassing my husband. He explained what had happened and instead of showing concern the guy on the end of the phone said 'Oh, I am sorry but whilst your wife is there, could I speak to her about her loan'. Unbelievable.

My husband and I have had enough, we contacted the Ombudsman and forwarded all relevant paperwork to him, he replied saying he had written to LloydsTsb and they had 60 days to sort the matter or he would register a formal complaint.

SUDDENLY...COMPLETE SILENCE....

They have finally stopped the harassment, the charges, and the letters and lo and behold the account was finally closed in October.

Meantime we have cleared all but £40.00 of the money owed on the current account, these charges rose to a whopping £1100.00 in the end.

True to form, although their 60 days was in fact over in September they have left it a further three weeks before a reply was sent.

So, they send us a letter saying they have closed the account, cancelled every one of the charges, found my £30.00 and now we only owe them the £166.00. What? No offer of compensation, no apology, and no mention of the money we had regularly been paying in until they closed the account.

We wrote back pointing this all out and just last week have received the reply. Basically, they agree to our figures and we now only owe them £40.00 on the current account. Well they had to really; we had bank statements to prove it.

They have also agreed to take a reduced payment on the two loans for a period of three months, after which they will re-assess the situation. Although my husband is now actually working, it won't actually alter the amount we will have to pay as he is on a low wage; in fact we are worse off now than when he wasn't working! So, I don't expect to be paying anymore when my three months is up.

So, now to the compensation, what wonderful figure have they awarded us with? Have a guess, what would you expect for the stress, harassment, inconvenience and general lack of service from this company? The fact that I have been a customer of theirs for sixteen years, all the help that should have been available and wasn't offered after my husband was taken ill? Not to mention the price of my unborn child, how much is that worth to them?

£1000.00, £2000.00? Ha, not in a million years, we have been offered £145.00 in compensation or we can carry on with our complaint to the Ombudsman. After two years of this, we really can't be bothered.

What does their slogan say? 'How can we help you live your life?' It’s a wonder we didn’t take ours.

Pathetic isn't it?