I have various accounts and cards, including a Santander account with a debit card to have my pension paid into. I use the card when I’m in England and (rarely since Brexit) online. When I’m here I occasionally check the app to see when the next pension is credited.
I checked it one day, and to my surprise saw two card payments to Apple and three to Uber Eats, fortunately on the day before. I rang Santander to report the fraud, and their very friendly employee spent an hour and a half discussing it with me and letting me listen to boring music. Fortunately this didn’t cost me anything as an Orange customer. I could even ring the 0800 number, which I didn’t think was possible from abroad.
He said that some recurring payments had been set up, and there were other card payments that had been or could be stopped. I’ve since been recredited with the Apple payments and one of the Uber Eats.
God knows how this happened. I last used the card when I was in England in May, and it’s been lying in a drawer ever since. I was really lucky I checked the app when i did, before it went any further.
The moral of the story is that if you have many accounts and cards, you have to keep checking everything to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.
“Is it a good idea to have many bank accounts and cards?”
Yes if you are a criminal and need to launder money.
Yes if you have more money than you know what to do with.
Yes if you’ve decided a way of avoiding tax by keeping your funds in perpetual motion.
I have two bank accounts in the UK, basically so that my savings, such as they are, are in two different places (belt and braces) and have done the same in France. I have to keep at least one UK account because of my non-state pensions. Each account comes with a card but I usually only use two of them - one for each country. I don’t fit into any of your categories and I am staggeringly law abiding. My Dad was a tax inspector and would be turning in his grave, if he had one, at the idea of me fiddling the taxes…
A major reason is that French banks are so expensive, that I am forced to seek alternatives, where I can overdraw and only pay the interest, have a free debit/credit card, can change money at low cost etc. Also backups are important.
Ooh, I don’t think so! The OP referred to ‘many’ accounts. I don’t think 2 counts as ‘many’. Even the Walpiri people had words for one, two and then many!
I actually have one UK account, one French account and one international account - but I don’t regard those as constituting many accounts
When we arrived in France we had well over 25 of them. Very much a result of the UK fixed term interest deals, so endless swapping of accounts. We have kept a handful, as it is so difficult now to reopen accounts in the UK, but most have £1 or £5 in them. So good luck to a fraudster!
I have never had an overdraft but always thought that it was possible to go over by accident, otherwise why would banks use the term ‘unauthorised overdraft’? Which I have often read in T&Cs.
Yep… in the T&C’s I read that “unauthorised overdraft” would cost me dearly… but an “authorised overdraft” wouldn’t…
very different levels of interest/charges …
It certainly isn’t a good idea to have several French bank accounts. In comparison with UK banks they are expensive. I have my French pensions paid into my account each month and only use my bank card in Europe. (During Covid not at all). Not only do I pay a monthly amount for maintaining the account, I also pay for the bank cards. This totals 95 Euros for 2022. The advantage for me is that I can pay in Euros whenever in Europe, The alternative is to have the Euros paid into the UK bank - but then there are the exchange rates and exchange fees (plus having to buy Euros when needed) . My UK bank offers a Euro account but not a bank card to go with it.
No idea currently about UK… I’m talking about France…
but, as I recall… in UK the customer was charged a large cost, for having a letter written to inform that customer that they had “unexpectedly” gone overdrawn.
The letter costing far more than the o/d sum itself in many cases…
Hi @vero as you know we recently moved back and we were set a monthly charge if we wanted an overdraft facility in the UK. Fortunately we didn’t need it and won’t need it here either
I have a UK account for my British pension, and because it’s good to keep one in case I ever want to go back, a German one for my wife’s and my German pensions, with a large authorised overdraft without extra charge, a Lithuanian one for changing currency, one bricks and mortar French one because my wife worries about everything being online, one free French online one, and two free credit cards not coupled with an account, one of them with cashback. As you see, there’s a good reason for virtually all of them.
Santander are pretty clear in stating that account holders must be UK resident and this is an issue with many other banks as well. Best to close them down as they do represent a risk in many ways. We had a Nationwide and a Santander account which we closed but retain an HSBC one, where our pensions are paid, as well as a Wise account with a facility to accept and pay in $ € and £ (many more are available of course). We use this to transfer money from HSBC to our Credit Agricole account in France (Britline) and we also have another UK credit card which makes no charge for international transactions and their exchange rate is usually pretty good (not as good as Wise but much better than most banks). HSBC’s cards do have a transaction fee for other currencies so we don’t use them except occasionally when in the UK. All cards are repaid in full each month but TBH if we ever needed to go into overdraft credit card interest rates are now below even agreed overdraft rates at UK banks unless the O/D is just for a few days.
I did try a French credit card (not CA) and it was hopelessly complicated and I dropped it. Even for € payments here in France I tend to use Wise as CA is so cumbersome and clunky, as well as taking much longer for payments to go through.
Why use credit cards at all? Well it gives flexibility if you need to make a large payment and are not in a position to move funds around (easier these days, mind, with instant payments in a phone app) but also because I frequently pay for travel that is reimbursed if and all works well I get the money back before it hits my account - not that it does all work well, of course!
Maybe this applies to new customers. They have not made any attempt to close my account yet
In what many ways?
They are very useful in the non-Euro countries if they don’t charge for the currency exchange.
They give you at least a couple of weeks until you have to pay.
You can’t hire a car without leaving a deposit by credit card.
The Gold cards give you various insurances and assistance.
Is this truly the case??? Can’t one write a cheque for the Deposit…
We don’t have any credit cards… and I was thinking of hiring a car for when daughter and grandson come on holiday next year (hopefully).
