Kibkom North Cyprus Forum

Three years ago, there was an article in Cyprus Today about the difficulties ex-pats had with renewing their debit cards with Lloyds TSB. A woman representative was quoted as saying there shouldn't be a problem - BUT THERE IS!!!

We have now been without our replacement cards since April 28th, when without our knowledge our current cards were cancelled as the new cards had been posted to us. Our old cards weren't due to expire until the end of July!! No-one told us that our cards had been cancelled and this caused some annoyance and embarrassment!

After several phone calls, and several months later, we are now told that replacement cards cannot be sent to North Cyprus as this is an embargoed country!!!

Lloyds TSB is supposed to be a major banking system!!?? I am not impressed. Anyone else having similar problems?

I believe Lloyds TSB had a simialr problem a couple of years ago and a big thing was made in CT and across the forums. It seems there is a wise guy works for the company that is a GC sympathiser judgeing by your comments and what happened last time.

It is a load of garbage about the post. Remember mail is sent to Mersin, Turkey not North Cyprus so unless someone is messing with the post it would get here. That said up until recently there were problems with the post then, surprisingly after a big investigation taken through the chairman of Post Office, IMO post improved out of all recognition.

We get mail from HSBC with no problem, including cards and I not heard of anyone having problems other than with Lloyds with the comments you state. No doubt I will get negatives now!!!!! I would write to the head of Lloyds TSB itemising your problems and actions taken.

Both Lloyds (debit card) and Halifax (credit card) declined to send me new cards on expiry of the old.
I had to chase both banks after non-arrival and they said that they didn't send cards abroad (TRNC wasn't specifically mentioned). I was left with the impression that neither bank would have done anything without prompting.
I had to change back to my UK address and get a relative to forward them to me.

Might be worth checking the terms and conditions of your account. It may be that your account is only eligible for use for someone who has a permanent UK address.

Several of us had this prob a few years back and the boss man of the Bank was consulted by Embargoed! who said there was no problem. We DID get our cards, but it looks as if they reverted. One member of staff said ;nowhere abroad' but I have two envelopes which were posted our by Lloyds and returned to our branch with the words 'Do not deliver - embargoed country!' . I still have them. I will take it up with Embargoed again if you like, or you can contact them via their web page. I will send copies of this to a couple of people involved. Disgusting that is what it is. I might have swallowed the non delivery abroad until I got my envelopes with not hand written word,s but a rubber stamp!!!!! Needless to say Lloyds denied all knowledge.

I have had a Lloyds account for over 20 years, never overdrawn, when my debit card came up for renewal I did not realise till I went to use it, when I phoned Lloyds they advised me that North Cyprus was a high risk area for posting therefore they did not send here, I pointed out that it was less high risk then most parts of England, they asked me when I wanted to travel to England to collect card, and I said never, so asked there advise on how to access my account, not possible, so when I said you are giving me no alternative but to close account, but I am not coming England to do so, so was advised to write a cheque for full amount and pay to another bank, then they would close account due to non activity, we think customer care here is bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I used to bank with Lloyds-TSB - they were a shower.

As regards risk, the Post Office at the place I lived in UK before I moved to TRNC employed foreign "agency workers". The chances of a card or similar post arriving there were not high.

One of their tricks was to dump the rest of their mail when they had had enough!

My husband has written to the head guy at Lloyds but we wont hold our breath.
It's just so frustrating as we have also been with them over 20 years now. We dread it when it's time to renew our bank cards. Why is it that other banking mail gets to us but they will never post our cards to us. The answer is to close the accounts with LLoyds down but they won't give a toss and so we struggle on.

Marion, is it worthwhile doing a feature on this old problem again? See how many others out there are still being affected. Can't be just us few on the Forum.

Yes, Keep Smiling, but last time I involved Embargoed! in London who got a letter from the then Chairman, (Mr Black, I think it was!), so if it is to have any effect, we need to involv e someone in Londion.

last time also I had other names of people affected, so PLEASE who else is affected, or do you know anyone, as this is a case where some numbers would help.

I will dig out the old info and approach Embargoed! but the curerent chairperson is not the same. But, this is a VERY important issue and was meant to have eben resolved. As you rightly say, how come the Statements can come but not cards, AND other organisations use DHL!

comments, anyone.

just a suggestion but why not open an account here transfer cash into it as and when you need it, and get a local credit/debit from the local bank what's the problem with that ?

If you do not get a satissfactiry result write to moneymail at The Sunday Mail, they take up lots of odd complaints, also get TRNC in the newspaper in UK.
But as Andreew says open an accout here Credit West in Karaglanaglu excellent, you can get up to 10%interest on account, credit card which acts as a cash card in ATM.

When our debit cards came up for renewal last year, the only way we could get them was to ask TSB to send them to a branch local to our daughter and we picked them up when we went to the UK for Christmas. I did write to the Chairman (Mr. Blank I think) who denied any problem and it seems that the decision rests with the manager of your particular branch. I did ask why all our cards with other banks are either posted here or sent by courier and all arrive satisfactorily but this did not seem to elicit a reply! The only reason we do not change our account is that we have so many standing orders etc., that it would be a nightmare to set them all up again from such a distance. Our credit cards are due for renewal in November so we will have to go through the nightmare all over again.

I am sure many will agree that a principle is involvedhere. many of us also have accounts here, but the ones in U.K we have had for almost a lifetime are the ones into which monies are paid and from which credit cards are paid by direct debit. so having an account here doe snot solve the problem. Also in the case of Alan, he has had credit cards with Lloyds 'for ever' and it is very much a case of honouring the fact that all of us are good customers. The bank is meant to serve US - not the other way round.

so guys I am happy to write osmething to send to MoneyMial, - but I need lots of thoughts of dissatisfied customers.

Last time, we had the bother of alan's son collecting them -and that should NOT be.

What do you all feel.

I do what Andrew says, pay UK cheque into local accout and cards, which I use for local shopping etc. Problem is the cards are in TL so if you want to purchase by mail order in Sterling you are faced with costs and rates of exchange. Also (though actually I have never tried) I dont think you can use local cards in the South.

I have to have a UK account because my pension provider will not pay direct to North Cyprus - and the arguments I have had that I do NOT live in either South Cyprus or Turkey would fill a book.

I had an account with local Branch of Lloyds for 10 years with very good service. ON their advice I transferred to LLoyds International and since then have had appalling bad service.

The problem was made worse when the gentleman from BRS visited Lloyds in England and served to convince them that the "unreliable local postal service" was a jolly good excuse for their own errors and omissions, despite the fact that I had sent him and them evidence that non receipt of statements was obviously their fault.

Some years back Lloyds INTERNATIONAL would send cards, but only if the customer paid for courier service atr something like twice the actual cost of a courier.

Like Optimist I would change banks , but I have so many arrangements in and out through Lloyds that it would be a nightmare to change them all and I do not visit the UK nor have family there or a UK address.

I have a Credit Card with HSBC> Now they take the opposite view. They send cards by post without registration or courier but only allow 2 weeks for postage. They say they advised by Royal Mail this is adequate. They say the registration process is adequate security. Unfortuntely the registration process involves a visit to a brach in the UK - it can with persistance by done by phone - an expensive nightmare!

Continued....................

Although Lloyds are particularly bad, I think the problems of North Cyprus are only an additional hurdle.

The combined greed and zenophobia of all financial institution makes any transaction a nightmare, and I have friends in the UK who say they cant carry out the simplest transaction in theirlocal bank without being tied up in yards of red tape by inexperienced staff.

So long as banks etc. continue to treat long standing customers with patently innocent sources of income as guilty of terrorism and/or drug trafficking/ and / or money laundering (and probably white slavery as well) until proved innocent by a mass of expensive certified documentation we will continue to have problems and the World will continue to be in a financial mess.

The tragic/funniest thing was on institution which insisted I sent original of statutary undertakers bills to prove my address. I pointed out that electricity bills only gave names and numbers, not addresses, and Muhtars bills were (at that time) hand written in Turkish - and illegible writing in any language - and only gave the name of my village as my address. Aftet the delay in getting copies and posting I sent them. Only to get a phone call asking for a translation! Which they quite happily accepted on the strength of one phone conversation to a number which, as far as they knew, anyone could have answered!!!

By comparison, it makes a visit to my local bank here where the staff know me, and the Manager will appear if I have a problem, a positive pleasure

My local bank here in Catalkoy greet me with affection when I go in. They remember my name and treat me like a person and ask me behind the desk for coffee or a chocolate that a customer has brought in. Ok the volume of customers is not like the uk but I remember a time in the dark past when we used to go out to dinner with the bank manager and his wife. The personal touch has been lost in the uk regretably.

message 14 there is no problem in using a card from here in the south i always use mine just to p*** them off they sometimes claim that the card is not good and will not work so i just stand there hold up the cue and tell them to keep trying there is nothing wrong with it ! once you done that it usually works first time after that how strange

Having had HUGE ENORMOUS problems with Halifax over this past year, Halifax is part of Lloyds and RBS. I have now seen the official documents which state quite clearly that the TRNC (because of the address being Mersin 10) is classified as an EMBARGOED Country. They will now no longer post credit cards, debit cards or cheque books to either here OR TURKEY. There is a list of roughly 15 embargoed countries and we are one of them. I begged them to send by Registered Post and charge me, they flatly refused. When you phone the help line, you are frequently told that this is not the case BUT I ASSURE YOU IT IS. I ended up making an official complaint about the standard of knowledge of some of the help line people and received an official apology and received compensation from the Halifax. My suggestion would be to do what I have had to do, register both On line banking and organic methods of banking with a UK address, so that cards are sent to that address and then arrange for someone to bring them over. This suggestion was given unoffocially by a Halifax bank employee.

as I mentioned above Sophie, this mattewr was taken up with Embrgoed years ago and I still have tw envelopes in my ppossession with the stamp 'Embargoed Country do not deliver' and yet spokespeople for the bank say otherwise so there is nothing new in what you are saying. And why they won't send to Turkey I just don't know.

Many of us get around it by having relatives collect them, BUT not everyone has relatives or an address in U.K and yet Lloyds are happy to pretend to care about their customers!

The reason the Deputy Finance Director gave me re Turkey (and they still consider we are Turkey because of the address) is that Turkey, together with Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, some of the "stans" and 2 countries in South America have the highest ratio of credit and debit card fraud and cloning in the world. He was adamant it had nothing to do with politics, more the protection of customers and the Banks.

Funny thing is that we too, after kicking up a fuss, got our cards sent and £75 compensation for the aggro! Now if we all did this, they might just change their minds. also of course, I think that it is a possibility that mail coming here gets lost because of Mersin 10 sorting office and not because this is TRNC. Just a thught - so don't shoot me!

Hi everyone, we have actually received a reply from LLoyds Customer Services confirming, yet again, that this is a high risk area for fraud and that LLoyds treat it as an embargoed country.

Since we have now been without our debit cards since April - and having been told several times that our cards have been posted to us - and then discovering that no cards were ever sent, we feel very let down. It is very clear to us that LLoyds staff are not briefed on this problem. Some are happy to try and help us - others are not bothered - but, overall, even the helpful ones are clearly not advised of this 'embargoed' policy for our little country.

They have bunged the odd £50 to us for making a complaint but it's our cards that we want. We have now given a UK address and hope that's the end of it - but the principle remains. It's our money and we should have proper access to it. Our best bet is internet banking and transferring amounts that way.

Thanks for your interest everyone. Happy to help if you do write to Money Mail, Marion.

We shouldn't really let the BIG BOYS tread on us like this but individually we are weak.