I have a coop account and a full lloyds current account (without the overdraft), I must say I have found the coop account to be an absolute nightmare as even though it is supposed to be a visa debit there are loads of places I can't use the card! mainly petrol stations, has a nightmare the other week as I knew we didn't have anything left in our lloyds account (just before payday) so put £10 of fuel in my car at the shell garage on my way to work and it wouldn't accept my coop card as payment!!! so I had to pray it would accept my lloyds card (not enough money in) which it did and transferred the funds across when I got home later that evening.
I am ditching the coop account as I can't go through that kind of stress everytime I need to pay for something! There also seem to be a lot of cash machines the coop card is not accepted at, HSBC which is our local bank we can't use it there for instance but I can use my lloyds one
Fully agree with you Lem about the Co-op - although not in an IVA since 2002 - got rid of the co-op/smile account a few months back. found customer service "cr*p" as well as long delays in updating their bank accounts to real time balances.
The amount of time my Visa Debit was refused (although money in the account)- thankful had the credit card to fall back on !
Oh you can use the Co-op card in the post office for cash withdrawal !!
Barclays are also now very helpful when it comes to opening accounts for people who are going to do an IVA or even declare bankruptcy. Their basic account also comes with a cash card.
also, I don't earn a penny interest on the coop account but do on the lloyds one so it makes sense to pool everything into just that one account, although I have opened a savings account with lloyds now which gives 4.5% interest for the 1st year so am putting in as much as I can into that
When we were going for our IVA we were told to get a current account but not with a debit card, apparently it had to be an ATM card. So thats what we did; but a lot of posters seem to have a debit card. Would it be worth asking if we can get one??
I'm in NI, so we bank with bank of Ireland. It wasn't our IP who gave us this advise but CAB. He also thought it would help us budget better. But sometimes if I have cash in my purse - I spend it!
Another thing - if you dont trust yourself with a debit card -
Is a pre paid credit card (they sometimes come with a small monthly fee) use it as a normal credit card (food shopping etc) - but you can only spent what on it.
You can usually top them up in the post office and on line
If you are in an IVA, there is no reason why you can not have an account which offers a debit card. The reason why this is a reasonably hot topic is previously the basic bank accounts or card cash accounts which many people needed to open when staring IVAs did not come with debit cards as standard. However more recently a number of banks have started issuing them. Probably in response to all the pre-paid debit card services that were springing up and getting in on the bank's act....
