Mate/closed account help

[di30]

Re: Mate/closed account help

Brill, open til 1pm Sat, will text to let him know now, thank you all.

[di30]

Re: Mate/closed account help

Not heard from him today, he did say he will let me know how he gets on.

Will message him again later.

He is very grateful for all your help, cheers folks.

[nattie]

Re: Mate/closed account help

Di, this may sound slightly different but as they say in Star Wars, "Use the force......"

If your friend is happy for you to write to the CEO then I would write making sure that you state that you are a moderator on a consumer forum called "All about debt" and that you are concerned that a forum user is being denied a bank account by them based on the financial difficulties that he experienced. Tell them you have been asked to intervene on his behalf because they were denying his access to a bank account and wanted to allow them to sort out these issues so that he was not prevented from accessing basic services that a disabled person required.

[di30]

Re: Mate/closed account help

Di, this may sound slightly different but as they say in Star Wars, "Use the force......"

If your friend is happy for you to write to the CEO then I would write making sure that you state that you are a moderator on a consumer forum called "All about debt" and that you are concerned that a forum user is being denied a bank account by them based on the financial difficulties that he experienced. Tell them you have been asked to intervene on his behalf because they were denying his access to a bank account and wanted to allow them to sort out these issues so that he was not prevented from accessing basic services that a disabled person required.

Excellent, thank you nattie.

He will certainly need help with writing letters, he is also dyslexic.

(If you look on my fb wall) he left a post on there, under the name of Rew King (yesterday). He is also on depression meds.

If he confirms that he is having problems opening another account, I think that what you suggested will be the next course of action.

Thank you.

[ScabHunter]

Re: Mate/closed account help

Hello Di,

I hope your friend got his bank account sorted out. If not, this might just get him out of immediate trouble -

I've spent a lot of time researching pre-paid debit cards as survival tools for “credit file challenged” people, and the best one I've found is a card called Kalixa. You do have to pay £7 to get the account opened, but from that point on all of the other charges can be avoided if you run the account properly.

Most significantly in this case, it has a function where wages can be paid into the e-account if you give the employer the account details. I'm assuming the same would apply to DWP benefits, although you'd need to look into that. There is a PDF form on the Kalixa site which you print off and had to the employer.

Virtually every bill can be paid by debit card, either online or over the phone (I assume from the fact that you said you were texting him that he owns a cell phone), even if you can't just pay it over the counter with a giro slip.

The only disadvantage with this arrangement compared with a bank account is that he'd get charged £1.75 every time he drew cash out of a machine. It does, however, mean that you can look at basic bank accounts such as HSBC which are normally ignored because they don't have debit cards. You can transfer money to Kalixa using online banking for free, so combining that with the HSBC accounts effectively gives you the debit card you need.

The big advantage of Kalixa is a situation like this where time is of the essence is that you can get the account opened virtually instantly online. You just have to have your postal address, an email address, and a way of loading the initial balance. If his Co-op debit card is still active, he can use that (once you get inside the Kalixa membership area, it only gives the option to use Visa credit cards, and not Visa debit cards. This is a “site admin error”, and if you enter debit card details it accepts them anyway). The expense of loading the initial £10 would be £10.18 if done this way. He could get the account opened within the hour, and although the card wouldn't arrive for another 7-10 days the account is usable without it.

In his case, there might be another advantage of having this type of account. If he has difficulty in managing money and has a history of going overdrawn, this can never happen with a Kalixa account. Any transaction which would take the account below zero is simply refused.

Hope this helps,
SH

[nattie]

Re: Mate/closed account help

Excellent, thank you nattie.

He will certainly need help with writing letters, he is also dyslexic.

(If you look on my fb wall) he left a post on there, under the name of Rew King (yesterday). He is also on depression meds.

If he confirms that he is having problems opening another account, I think that what you suggested will be the next course of action.

Thank you.

What i would do is deal solely with their CEO office and no one else. I have done the same with users of another forum and it seems to help move mountains when you have a forum name behind you, so to speak.

[di30]

Re: Mate/closed account help

Hello Di,

I hope your friend got his bank account sorted out. If not, this might just get him out of immediate trouble -

I've spent a lot of time researching pre-paid debit cards as survival tools for “credit file challenged” people, and the best one I've found is a card called Kalixa. You do have to pay £7 to get the account opened, but from that point on all of the other charges can be avoided if you run the account properly.

Most significantly in this case, it has a function where wages can be paid into the e-account if you give the employer the account details. I'm assuming the same would apply to DWP benefits, although you'd need to look into that. There is a PDF form on the Kalixa site which you print off and had to the employer.

Virtually every bill can be paid by debit card, either online or over the phone (I assume from the fact that you said you were texting him that he owns a cell phone), even if you can't just pay it over the counter with a giro slip.

The only disadvantage with this arrangement compared with a bank account is that he'd get charged £1.75 every time he drew cash out of a machine. It does, however, mean that you can look at basic bank accounts such as HSBC which are normally ignored because they don't have debit cards. You can transfer money to Kalixa using online banking for free, so combining that with the HSBC accounts effectively gives you the debit card you need.

The big advantage of Kalixa is a situation like this where time is of the essence is that you can get the account opened virtually instantly online. You just have to have your postal address, an email address, and a way of loading the initial balance. If his Co-op debit card is still active, he can use that (once you get inside the Kalixa membership area, it only gives the option to use Visa credit cards, and not Visa debit cards. This is a “site admin error”, and if you enter debit card details it accepts them anyway). The expense of loading the initial £10 would be £10.18 if done this way. He could get the account opened within the hour, and although the card wouldn't arrive for another 7-10 days the account is usable without it.

In his case, there might be another advantage of having this type of account. If he has difficulty in managing money and has a history of going overdrawn, this can never happen with a Kalixa account. Any transaction which would take the account below zero is simply refused.

Hope this helps,
SH

Excellent, thank you.

That is so fab.

I have left him a few messages and still waiting for him to get back to me, so hopefully this matter's been resolved by now, but otherwise what you have suggested also appears to be very helpfull too, thank you for that.

He lives quite a few miles from me, otherwise I would have made a personal visit to him, with a bit of luck he will let me know how things are currently standing right now.

I shall keep you all posted, thank you so much.

[di30]

Re: Mate/closed account help

Got a short message from my mate, he's happy and have been accepted for a bank account with Natwest.

Thank you all for all your amazing help with this one.

[Susie]

Re: Mate/closed account help

Thats good news, he can have a fresh start and will hopefully be ok from now on