Lloyds Bank Platinum / Gold Current Accounts Review

Overall Rating

Responsive. Helpful. Easy to use online banking. Attentive and understanding Premier account manager.

Unacceptable hike in charges, and measly interest rates on a Premium account.

We never thought we'd have to change banks. We wanted to be loyal customers to Lloyds TSB. Probably for the rest of our lives. But now we can't because they're taking us for a ride.

I have been a very happy Lloyds TSB customer since 1991, when Barclays shafted me as a student, asking for their measly £300 overdraft back during my first summer holiday as a student. Lloyds immediately offered me a £1000 overdraft so I moved to them and have been very happy with them ever since. When I graduated and got a job in 1994 they were keen to sweeten me as a customer and continued to make me ever-more attractive offers. This culminated in my partner and I having a joint Premier Account (paying £15 a month for some useful, and dud, 'perks') a few years ago. About a week ago they announced that they were going to try to charge us an extra £10 a month, that's a total of £25 a month (£300 a year!) just for the privilege of having an account with them. Crazy. Having had no joy from their very helpful, but ultimately impotent, call centre staff, we did a bit of research. These added-value accounts are nothing of the sort! We now feel like we've been fleeced for the past few years, even though that we were happy because their customer service always seemed pretty good.

Anyway, we've now discovered that by:
a) 'downgrading' our Premier account (at £300 per year and 0.1% interest on our average balance of about £4K) to a Lloyds TSB Classic Plus with £0 charges and 4% interest; and
b) moving our savings to the Coventry BS 'first' account, which pays 5.1% on balances upto £250,000;
that we are going to save about £1,500 extra a year!

Lloyds TSB have shot themselves in the foot with us. If they hadn't put up their charges by 70% on our account we'd have been none the wiser, and would have remained happy customers - probably for the rest of our lives. Even when I've explained our dissatisfaction there was nothing the poor Premier manager could do for us. They have to charge us the new rate. I don't want half the services they offer with the account, and the other half we have anyway (Breakdown cover comes with our car for 2 years, home emergency and mobile phone cover comes with our home insurance). I'm sure I can help to prevent my identity being stolen by being careful, and most cards have some built in protection, so Sentinel is redundant. As for the other stuff, travel insurance you can buy for about £40pa to cover most family travel, and Lloyds offer of commission-free currency is offset by their rubbish exchange rates.

If you've been duped into one of these added-value accounts, I suggest you look at what's included, what you actually need and how much 'value' they really offer you. We were amazed.

Incidentally we used our disappointment at Lloyds to get quotes to compare other services they've sold us, and our home insurance will be £200 a year cheaper with Halifax!

So Lloyds TSB, thanks for the offer of the £300 a year Premier account, but no thanks.

Members' Comments onrobertriche's Review

• macca160670 on 20th Feb 2007

  I totally agree. It is a shame really, as Lloyds is a good bank, but their staff must get some good incentives to sell te Platinum and Gold current accounts.