When my daughter was little, I opened a Lloyds Junior Isa for her.
Five years ago, our family moved to Australia. The Isa rules said we could keep the account, but no longer pay in as we weren’t British taxpayers. It has £4,250 inside.
In March this year, my daughter turned 18 and wrote to Lloyds, asking it to close the Isa and pay the cash into her Australian account. This didn’t happen.
In May, we were visiting family around Britain and tried to close the account in person. We went into three Lloyds branches in different parts of the country which was a great inconvenience, taking three full days of our three-week trip.
The staff seemed bamboozled by the fact we’d moved abroad, and each gave us completely different and contradictory instructions on closing the account.
To make things more complicated, Lloyds would only phone my daughter’s grandmother, as it wouldn’t accept our Australian mobile phone numbers or an email.
Ultimately we left without getting the money. Is it lost forever? S.T, Australia
Neigh good: Lloyds wasn’t able to sort out a customer’s Junior Isa cash transfer in branch on three separate occasions
Helen Crane, This is Money’s consumer champion, replies: Your story is a sad reflection on customer service at British banks.
In the era of frustrating AI chatbots, it would be nice to think that walking up to the counter and speaking to a real person would be the one avenue you could rely on to get the answers you needed.
You even interrupted your family road trip to do so, driving miles out of your way several times to find the nearest branch and wasting time queueing when you could have been catching up with friends and relatives.
You told me this took up three full days of your three-week holiday, which as a proportion of the cost of the total trip was about £400.
These efforts were wasted, though, as the fact your circumstances were slightly out of the ordinary seemed to send the branch staff into a spin.
To be clear, your daughter is still perfectly entitled to the money from her Junior Isa, despite now being a resident of Australia.
Because of their tax-free benefits, Isas can only be opened by residents of Britain.
If they leave, they can’t pay any more money in – but the account can stay open.
Your daughter’s Junior Isa was set up when you and her were both British citizens.
You stopped making new contributions at the end of the tax year in which you moved to Australia, as per the British Government’s rules.
The money is allowed to continue accumulating interest, though, which it did.
When the child turns 18, they are allowed to take out the money and close the account. However, they might be taxed on the cash in the country where they now live.
This is the case for your daughter, but she will still be left with a useful rainy day fund as she embarks on adult life.
Sadly, her simple request to get her £4,250 provoked all kinds of confusion and misinformation at Lloyds.
First, she received a letter to your Australian address explaining how to switch her Junior Isa to an adult Isa. Your daughter is not allowed to do this, as she’s not UK-based.
Over in the UK, you first visited Lloyds’ Windsor branch.
Staff told you they needed to contact head office and would call you – but you had to hand over your daughter’s grandmother’s number, as they couldn’t accept an Australian phone number or email.
This made life difficult, as you weren’t staying with her for all of the three-week trip.
You didn’t hear, so a week later you visited the Ferndown branch in Dorset, where there was no record of your Windsor enquiries.
After you explained everything again, the staff said they couldn’t close the account.
A few days after that, grandma received a call saying that Lloyds’ head office had provided instructions on how to close the account, and all your daughter had to do was head to any branch of Lloyds with a form of identification.
You’d moved on to the Midlands by then, and went to the Redditch branch where your daughter filled out an account closure form.
But then, she was told she couldn’t have the money paid into an Australian bank account, or in cash – it could only be paid into a UK account.
Messenger: The customer’s grandmother had to relay messages to her from Lloyds, as it wouldn’t call her on an Australian mobile number
Reluctantly, you said it could be paid into your own UK account and were told this would happen within a few days.
Three days later, Lloyds was back on the phone to grandma – this time telling her the money had been transferred to the second branch you visited in Ferndown, and that your daughter needed to go there to withdraw it.
She couldn’t do so that day, as you had since travelled across the country.
It was just as well she didn’t make the trip, as the next day Lloyds said a mistake had been made and she needed to go to a branch half an hour away in Wareham.
Nearing the end of your trip, you were totally confused about where the money was, and didn’t want to waste time travelling across the country to find it might not be there.
In the end, you left Britain at the start of June and hoped the electronic transfer organised in Redditch would go through.
But then, you were told this wouldn’t happen and that Lloyds would send a banker’s draft in the post.
You have now received this, but cannot cash it. It is notoriously tricky to cash foreign cheques, as the majority of banks in both Britain and Australia don’t accept them. If you do find one that will, it will likely charge fees.
You made a complaint online but it wasn’t acknowledged. You then called Lloyds, which said the account had been closed.
Your daughter tried to set up online banking, but couldn’t as she no longer had valid account details.
Since returning to Australia, you told me you’ve spent nine hours dealing with the Lloyds complaints process, and based on your salary that time is worth £500.
Your daughter has also started a new job recently and you believe the delay in receiving this money will increase her tax bill, as opposed to what she would pay if she had received the money in the previous tax year.
The Australian tax year runs from 1 July to 30 June.
I contacted Lloyds to ask why its staff found the idea of transferring Jisa funds to an account down under so mind-boggling.
It said it never received your daughter’s letter saying that she would like to close the account, which isn’t hugely surprising given the huge distance it had to travel.
It admitted that some of the steps taken in its branches were incorrect.
Specifically, the transfer to your own account which you thought was arranged in Redditch should not have been suggested. This transfer was rejected as the receiving account was not in your daughter’s name.
However, after I stepped in, it agreed to set up an international bank transfer to pass on the money instead of a cheque. This is in the works and the money is set to arrive with your daughter shortly, along with a £500 goodwill payment.
Lloyds has also agreed to pay £106.43 in lost interest, for the period between the account being closed and you receiving the money.
You remain upset Lloyds has not agreed to pay your daughter more, given that the delay in paying the money will likely increase her tax bill.
However, I’m pleased a solution has been found to transfer the money – and astounded a bank transfer couldn’t have been done in the first place.
A spokesman said: ‘Transferring an Isa should be easy and we’ve fallen short of the high standards our customers expect from us – we take this seriously and we’ll learn from this.
‘We’re working to finalise [the customer’s] transfer, and we’ll offer her a further payment to try and make things right and have apologised for the issues she’s had.’
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