E B writes: My daughter is 20 and lives in New Zealand. Last summer she came back to the UK for six months and obtained temporary clerical work. She went to Lloyds TSB to open a current account so her salary could be paid in. She was told the only option was a Select account (with a monthly fee) and was also persuaded to take out mobile phone insurance and roadside assistance (even though she does not drive). The account was not suitable, and since her return to New Zealand has been racking up fees and interest totalling in excess of £200, which is now being chased by debt collectors. My efforts to help have been hampered by the fact the bank refuses to speak to me, even though my daughter has written twice giving it permission to deal with me.

This was so obviously the wrong account for your daughter. Lloyds TSB is not even arguing the point (except to say, half-heartedly, that the charges were imposed correctly according to its published tariffs). It is refunding £222 of charges plus £20-worth of fees for the Select account; it has been changed to a (non-fee paying) Classic account, and your daughter — now living permanently in New Zealand — will be closing it as soon as possible.

I missed out on my insurance

ES writes: I have had an HSBC mortgage since 1981. I was made redundant in April last year, and used my redundancy money to repay the outstanding mortgage in full. I have been out of work since but continue to look for employment. Earlier this year I was checking all my direct debits and standing orders and found two I didn’t recognise. One, it transpired, was for mortgage protection insurance, and I wrote to ask the bank to cancel this — as it served no useful purpose — and to refund my premiums since May 2007 which was when I paid off my mortgage. To its credit, the bank agreed.

But it was, of course, a mistake on my part to ask for this, as I realised belatedly that at the time I was made redundant I would have been eligible for 12 months of mortgage interest payments payable under the policy. I wrote to the bank this year asking if it would consider making a goodwill payment to reflect this benefit and was refused on the grounds that my mortgage had been repaid.

You must have been kicking yourself when you realised; no doubt you could have found many other uses for your redundancy payment. The bank is keen to stress that in its view, it has “done nothing wrong” in refusing.

However, it was prepared to have another look at it following my intervention. But then there was another problem; you had refused, as a matter of principle, to sign on for jobseeker’s allowance, partly because you didn’t need the money and partly because you disliked all the hoops you would have to go through in signing on, which would probably have slowed down your own efforts to find work. In the end you signed on — but a fortnight later signed yourself off again, happy to forgo the job seeker's allowance for the sake of an easier life.

The problem is that being signed on is an important condition of your being eligible for any payout under the insurance policy. So in theory, at most you are entitled to a fortnight’s-worth of mortgage payments, around £50. HSBC has, however — and again, purely as a gesture of goodwill — agreed to up this to £250.

You are, at time of writing, still mulling over whether to accept this or to ask for more, on the basis that if you had realised you had the policy, and had also realised the importance of signing on in order to claim, you would have done so. I have intimated that this might be just too many “would haves” and “could haves” for HSBC to swallow; but I am not the final arbiter on this, and it is up to the bank to decide.

Barclays gets the message

RL writes: We visited our local Barclays branch on March 14 to set up four separate cash Isas: one each for my wife and myself, for both the 2007-08 and 2008-09 tax years. One of these four was set up correctly.

You battled your way through eight months’ worth of phone calls in trying to establish what had happened; to be fair to Barclays, it had (but only just) managed to get to grips with some of your problems just before I contacted it.

Your wife’s 2007-08 Isa was the lottery winner among the four, being set up as it should have been; your Isa application for that year has been lost for good (and cannot now be reinstated), and Barclays is paying you £220 representing the value of the lost tax relief over five years. As the bank cannot find either of your applications for 2008-09 you will have to apply again, and it has promised that if you do, it will backdate interest to the date they should have been opened, April 6, 2008.

Whatever you might feel about its products now, this seems to me an offer from the bank you cannot refuse, as you’ll be getting interest at the now-historic level of around 6.25% for most of this period of back-dating.

I’m pleased to see the bank has also pushed the boat out somewhat in the matter of a gesture of goodwill. Its initial response added £20 to your £220 payment to cover the cost of all the calls you had to make; now head office, muscling in on the act following my contact, has offered a further £600 compensation.

I do think, at last, the bank is beginning to be just a little bit ashamed of its record of handling Isa applications this year.

Finally, good for Woolwich

JW writes: I had an Open Plan mortgage with the Woolwich. I decided to re-mortgage with the Britannia. A month after the re-mortgage was completed, I received a letter from the Woolwich saying that there was a shortfall of £176.92 although it had previously confirmed I owed nothing.

I appealed to the Ombudsman, which said I should try to sort it out with the Woolwich first. The only response I have had from the Woolwich is that the sum is still owing, that interest would accrue, and that I would be reported to a credit reference agency if I did not pay.

All this to-ing and fro-ing took about five months before you contacted me. My initial thought was that it was at least possible Woolwich was correct in stating you owed this sum, but you had asked a good and reasonable question as to why this sum did not show on your original redemption statement (and why the Woolwich was prepared to release its charge on your property while it was still owing). I felt you were entitled to an explanation at the very least — and a chance to repay the money (if it was owed) without any additional interest.

Woolwich’s response, admittedly only following my intervention, is nevertheless an object lesson in how such complaints should be dealt with. It apologised for its shortcomings in contacting you, and it went on to explain the situation very clearly.

It seems that due to some internal mistakes it had initially failed to ask you for this money although you did genuinely owe it. And it is now writing off the full sum. You, meanwhile, have thanked me for my help in achieving “justice”; I’m pleased for your sake, though I feel that, somewhat inadvertently, I have achieved rather more than “justice” for you. Good for the Woolwich.