Mamie brought her case to us because she felt the packaged bank account that her bank had persuaded her to open, didn’t meet her needs.
What happened
Mamie opened a packaged bank account that charged fees in return for benefits. The two main benefits were travel insurance and roadside assistance.
But later, she realised she didn’t need the benefits and thought the bank had mis-sold her the account. So, she complained to the bank and asked it to return the fees she’d paid.
The bank told Mamie it wasn’t at fault because she’d said she was happy with the sale at the time. It rejected her request for a refund, so Mamie came to us for help.
What we said
We looked into the details of Mamie’s case and learned more about her life and wellbeing at the time when the packaged bank account was sold to her.
At the time, she’d had some health problems. She only travelled in her carer’s car and couldn’t travel abroad. This meant she couldn’t use either of the account’s main benefits – roadside assistance or travel insurance.
The bank said that Mamie had done a customer satisfaction survey after the account was sold to her. It pointed out that, in this survey, Mamie said she was “very happy” with the sale.
But we felt that this was probably because she hadn’t been given enough information at this point to realise the account wasn’t right for her. She didn’t know at the time that she wouldn’t be able to use its main benefits.
We upheld Mamie’s complaint and told the bank to refund her the extra account fees she had paid and interest.