The Lemon Fool

Mrs C and my finances are all, effectively, joint - and have been since before we got married in the early 1980s. I know not everyone works that way - horses for courses and all that. Furthermore I do all the financial management and moving of money - not because I am the "man" - simply because it interests me more than Mrs C.

We moved house earlier this year and I forgot to let Ulster Bank know. We had a joint account which was active for 3 years from 2017. I had to recall my online login details and then open up an online chat from inside the Account/View Details section. They changed the address details for me but then told me that my wife would have to let them know she had moved too. Furthermore she would have to do so by going through precisely the same laborious process as I had just done. The trouble is Mrs C does not have an online account for Ulster Bank or - if she ever did - it was used for the sole purpose of opening the account 6 years ago, so there is no way she will know any log in details.

I find it odd that Ulster Bank would see a greater security risk in allowing me to inform them of an address change for both holders of a joint account, than sending future bank statements to an address which they know to be incorrect (assuming they broadly believed me). I asked if she could call a telephone banking line but the answer was a firm "no".

Of course I cannot close the account without Mrs C having an online account (from which to close it). That probably explains why the account has been sitting with 1p in it for the last 4 years. It also means that I won't be opening up a new Ulster e-Saver despite them having a leading rate.

I find this sort of thing really frustrating and I know that Mrs C will have zero interest in trying to sort it.

To sort it out, Mrs C has registered for Internet Banking with Ulster Bank. Of course it sends an account activation code to our old address but this is all far more secure than me updating the joint account address details

We have Royal Mail redirect so I don't envisage a problem.

Well this made me laugh. Having said that they wouldn't allow me to change Mrs C's address and she would have to do it via online banking, they sent the activation code for online banking to our NEW address. So they must have changed her address too

Clariman wrote:We moved house earlier this year and I forgot to let Ulster Bank know. We had a joint account which was active for 3 years from 2017. I had to recall my online login details and then open up an online chat from inside the Account/View Details section. They changed the address details for me but then told me that my wife would have to let them know she had moved too.

Brilliant - right up there with Lloyds messing us about with MrsF's parents accounts under PoA - spent over 2 hours in the branch to close a savings account with a pound in (one you had to open alongside an ISA once upon a time). They then refused the ISA transfer as MrsF's signature on the transfer form didn't match the one they had on file for her parent, even though they had the PoA on file and the transferee bank had done the due diligence and requested the transfer, so we complained, and they compensated us £80

Into the account we'd closed a month before

That sounds like it should be on my frustration thread

It’s not just joint accounts

I opened a NatWest account in a local branch. Internet and telephone banking enabled. Then they closed my local branch. So I told them to close the account. Nope! Have to visit a branch to close the account. But you’ve closed my branch!

So like yours, it is sat with 1p in it and will be forever as far as I’m concerned.

Gryff

OOI - could they actually have 0p in them? merely curious!

gryffron wrote:It’s not just joint accounts

I opened a NatWest account in a local branch. Internet and telephone banking enabled. Then they closed my local branch. So I told them to close the account. Nope! Have to visit a branch to close the account. But you’ve closed my branch!

So like yours, it is sat with 1p in it and will be forever as far as I’m concerned.

The irony there is that, as I described elsewhere on this site, NatWest would not let me open an account in my local branch. They told me I had to do it online!

gryffron wrote:I opened a NatWest account in a local branch. Internet and telephone banking enabled. Then they closed my local branch. So I told them to close the account. Nope! Have to visit a branch to close the account. But you’ve closed my branch!

When we moved to Shropshire I went into the Exeter Yorkshire BS to tell them the new address (we'd already exchanged). They required proof of the new address before they'd changed it, but at least my passbook and driving licence were fine to close the account. This was in 2020.

gryffron wrote:It’s not just joint accounts

I opened a NatWest account in a local branch. Internet and telephone banking enabled. Then they closed my local branch. So I told them to close the account. Nope! Have to visit a branch to close the account. But you’ve closed my branch!

So like yours, it is sat with 1p in it and will be forever as far as I’m concerned.

Gryff

These days, people seem to do so many things by phone, but anything involving money should always be done by official letter, sent recorded delivery.

But in any case, your account will be become dormant and then closed anyway.


Steve