France in Focus

Having a bit of a dispute with Fortuneo Bank at the moment. Last year my wife and I instructed Fortuneo to cancel our debit cards and close our joint current account. Fortuneo were a complete shambles and we wanted away from them. We received an e-mail back stating that our debit cards had been cancelled, but they would leave our current account open, as there would be no charges associated with the account, unless we contacted them again to tell them that we wanted to close the account.

When we opened our account in 2011 we took out insurance against loss or theft of our cards, something that I regret now. We have recently received an e-mail from Fortuneo informing us that our account is 12 euros overdrawn, after checking the now empty account I indeed saw the balance as -12 euros, the payment trying to be taken for the debit card insurance. So being very angry I e-mailed them again pointing out that we had cancelled our debit cards last year, so there should be no insurance due on the said cards. I received a reply back stating as the insurance is ongoing, and we had not cancelled it even though we do not have the debit cards any longer, and the amount is still payable!!!

Nothing really surprises me now having lived in France for over 13 years, but even by French standards this really does take things to a new level as to how stupid certain things are here. I guess that this is maybe a unique situation, but has anybody else encountered a similar situation? And do you think that I am within my rights not to pay the 12 euros. I know it is a small amount of money, but having been messed around by Fortuneo on several other occasions, I really do not want to pay the 12 euros.

Hi Merlot,

If you are on FaceBook, there is a private group called "Strictly Legal France" who may be able to give proper legal advice. Like you say, it's not a large amount, but it's the principle, and are they going to keep charging for this!

Maybe the insurance is offered by a third party, not the bank.

Generally, insurance policies must be terminated in writing.

The only sure-fire way to stir them up is by writing a (concise) letter to their Pdg, sent LRAR. I know it'll cost €6, but you don't want to risk having your credit rating trashed.

Pascal Donnais, Président du Directoire
Fortuneo Banque
Tour Ariane - 5, place de la Pyramide 92088 Paris La Défense France

Thank you all for your replies. I do not participate on FaceBook and all other social media sites, so sadly I cannot take up your suggestion Bayleaf, but thanks for the suggestion. It seems a crazy situation to find myself in and as niemeyjt points out all insurances must be cancelled in writing, even though in my case I cancelled the cards and wrongly assumed that the associated insurance would be cancelled automatically.

So I am gong to go down the route suggested by MAD87 and send a formal complaint to the Pdg, and reluctantly in the mean time I will pay the 12 euros demanded to preserve my credit rating. The original insurance payment was 30 euros a year, a 12 euro and 18 euro breakdown of the premium. I don't think that I will enquire as to why it is 'only' 12 euros.

It is a shame that people have been turned off FaceBook as there are some very good sources of info on there, the woman that runs the driving licence group was instrumental in my wife's being issued, albeit I upset her in the process.

Just a thought if you want I can copy and paste your original post and put it on the group under my name, so you would not be involved.

Gosh, that is very kind of you Hugh, I have no objections if you want to put my original post on FaceBook, it would be very much appreciated.

Done awaiting approval from their admin, I take it the insurance was all arranged by the bank, and not a separate arrangement made by yourself.

Hello Hugh, yes the insurance was taken out through Fortuneo, not a separate arrangement made by myself. Basically my wife and I had our Assurance Vies with Fortuneo, we had enough savings with them for Fortuneo to offer us free gold cards with no strings attached. I decided to take out the insurance not knowing if French banks covered any fraud or loss of cards. After a while Fortuneo started to insist that the card must be used every month or they would impose a charge. As Fortuneo was not our primary bank account we just kept the cards as a back up. To cut a long story short, they upped the charge for non use of the cards each month to 9 euros. That is when we decided to cancel them.