Building Society account and address verification oddity

In message , Lobster writes

Yes.

Yes.

The 'they' to which you refer is the Government. You have a chance to do something about that in a week or so.

I suspect they have lost the plot. I, too had a rather bizarre experience with my own bank, Abbey. I moved address in January and told them I was moving and informed them of my new address. I am getting mail redirection and so was surprised to discover that they sent my February monthly statement to my old address. I thought perhaps my letter had got lost in the system and so wrote to them again asking them to send correspondence to my new address. I heard nothing for a while and then received my March statement redirected from my old address. I then got a letter from them saying they could not comply with my request to register a change of address unless I sent them some evidence (like a utility account, or such-like). I did this and they are now sending statements direct to my new address. But what I find strange about this is that they exposed me to the possibility of "identity theft". I don't know who moved in to my old flat, and if I had not been getting mail redirection I know the postman would simply have posted the bank statements through the door regardless of who was living there. At the very least, the bank could have replied to me promptly and told me what was required. As it was they just ignored my request and carried on posting to an address that they had good cause to believe was no longer valid.

Ellis

--SNIP--

If everyone acted like ABBEY they how could you ever change address since nobody would accept the change until someone else did - Catch -22??

Mark BR

That is certainly true of things like passports and driving licences. Of course, utility companies have to accept that you are receiving services at a named address so they can get paid. But it may be weeks before you receive statements from them that you can use to verify your new address. In the meantime your Abbey monthly statements (and perhaps offers of loans) are going to some unknown person at your old address.

As it happens I also have an account with a major building society and they simply accepted my new address without playing any games. So I am inclined to think that internal procedures may be as much to blame as government legislation. It seems that Abbey are simply more scared of (upsetting) the government than they are of their own customers. It is quite absurd really that they asked for a "copy" of a utility bill rather than an original. How easy is it to put any address on any utility bill with a scanner and computer?

I realize that we live in a dangerous world and starving terrorists of funds seems basically a sound idea but I am not convinced that bogging down financial organizations in mounds of bureaucracy and treating every customer as a potential terrorist is going to achieve government aims.

Ellis

Ellis wrote on Fri, 22 Apr 2005

Abbey do seem to be quite fixed on and assiduous with their procedures. I had an application form for an account returned, because I hadn't completed the Occupation field. I completed it saying something like Unspecified, and the acount was opened. But even then I had an evening phone call from them several weeks later chasing it up.

A friend's girlfriend works at Abbey in the money laundering department and says that they got stung for a 7 figure fine for non compliance a few months back

Still the department must have made plenty in it's time. ;-)

DG