Bounced my £15,000 cheque for no good reason

I received a large sum from a maturing endowment policy,paid directly into my current account. After receiving it I went into my branch (Reading) and explained that I was going to pay a cheque for £15,000 from this into a building society savings account, also in my name. I was assured there would be no problem, so I walked around to the society branch and wrote out a cheque.

A few days later the society wrote to me saying that the cheque had bounced. I went to Lloyds and asked for an explanation since there were more than adequate funds in the account. The cheque was produced and I was told that the signature did not match. This was my ordinary signature that I had used for 40 years in writing Lloyds cheques and there was no difference. I then asked how did they know it did not match and was told that, actually, they did not have my signature on record, but because of the amount they assumed it did not match. No attempt had been made to contact me before rejecting the cheque. The cheque was made out to myself. They were totally unapologetic and suggested that it was my responsibility to have supplied them with a sample signature, even though they had never asked for it.

I am now in the process of moving my current account elsewhere and removing my investments from Lloyds Private Banking. They are useless, complacent, unapologetic for their errors and have no idea about customer service. Avoid them like the Ebola virus.