Thanks for your advice Old Cogger I have spent hours yesterday writing out the complaint and issues and repercussions in full, today I am finishing that off and will send to the CEO, before tackling a call to the Ombdsman.

Hi Old Cogger, and thank you for the email details .. I am doing that as we speak. I can't remember if I did the online thingy to notify them I was away, possibly not as I had no plans to use my debit card overseas, however, I can't get into my account now to check. I did inform them in various calls that I was overseas, and would be for an unspecificed period, this was to fraud team and customer services, but nothing was offered.

I opened a Club Lloyds account prior to Xmas, primarily for the benefits it advertised. Under doctor’s orders, I am currently abroad to reduce my stress levels. I have a large sum of money in my account, and have been trying to use the time to move this to other accounts I have that it will earn interest on. Each time I try to make a transaction, either using online banking or via debit card, to other accounts in my name which are already set up with my online banking, Lloyds block them and make me call their Fraud Team. I am making the calls from abroad, I think the shortest call to date has been around 30 minutes, each time I am made to answer questions from my credit file and a trace is left on my file each time they make me do this. Yesterday, at circa 3pm, I tried for the second time to move a large sum to an account I hold with RCI bank, the payment, for the second time was blocked. The call time I made to the Fraud team was in excess of 1 hour. The end result of the call was that my account is totally blocked and Lloyds are forcing me to return to the UK to present myself and ID to a Lloyds branch before I can access my money. This is my normal day-to-day banking account which I can no longer access, check that payments are being made into it, or make ad hoc bill payments or move money. The guy I spoke to in the fraud team, his attitude towards me inflamed the situation, he refused to let me speak to a manager, pass the call to a manager, or get a manager to call me back. He lied to me and told me he would put me through to customer services to make a complaint, he didn’t he put me back into the long queue to wait again for the Fraud team. Directly after this, I called the Complaints team. again a long wait to speak to someone., before starting on a 2-hour call with them. After they liaised with Fraud I was told that there was no block on my online banking (with me accessing my account while they were still on the line to ensure this was the case) that all I had to do was call Fraud again to go through more credit file checks to get the payment authorised. The complaint I had changed from initially being about the block on my account and enforced return to the UK, to about the conduct and attitude with ....., the Fraud team member. I was offered compensation of £160 to cover the cost of in excess of 3 hours of international mobile calls. I did not accept this to close the complaint, I elevated the complaint to a higher level (.......), where we went over everything, double-checked everything, and it was left in his hands to investigate further while I was left to go through the rigmarole regarding my transfer with the Fraud team again. This whole scenario which started at 3pm, concluded with the termination of this call after 6pm. 9 am this morning I went online to check my bank account before getting up the courage to tackle another call with the Fraud dept…..my online access was blocked. The start of many phone calls was to the complaints department to speak to either of the two people from the day before, this was not possible and I was put into the ‘care’ of a lady called ..... informed me that my account was blocked and that I would have to return to the UK, etc, before it would be unblocked. To cut a long story short, she confirmed with me the address of 3 branches in Edinburgh that I could do so, with me informing her that I wanted to make face-to-face contact with the manager of the branch to address my issues, and that I would be pursing costs for flights, transfers, accom, time off work etc. She refused my request to speak with someone senior and she terminated the call with me. started to look at flights to find the first available one is not until next Saturday, a week away. started to try to get contact details for the branch so I could phone to ensure a manager would be there, to make sure they could do everything that had to be done (from their side and from mine), and to make an appointment. You would think this would be easy, but being Lloyds, no it is not… .there is only an 0845 no provided, extortionate to call from abroad, and I was forced to call the call center. On doing so I was informed that there are in fact no Lloyds branches in Scotland, that the branch we were looking at was a Bank of Scotland one, with no telephone number for customers, as are all branches apparently, that I cannot talk to anyone in branch directly and that if I wished to make contact I had to do it via an agent in the call center, who then tried to call it for me with no joy. This call terminated after 1pm today, another 4 hours of my life wasted.