Has anyone else been asked to verify their identity for credit card company after years of holding the account?

[dontcryitsonlyajoke]

DH has had a credit card with John Lewis for nearly a decade and I've been the additional cardholder all that time. Pay bills in full on time, never defaulted on payments, spend several thousand on it every month etc.

He just received a letter saying they didn't verify the additional cardholders details properly. They don't even mention me by name at all in the letter but They now want me to

1. make copies of photo ID and address ID
2. get them certified by somebody upstanding (same list of professions as passport applications basically) OR go to nearest JL (an hour away) with original docs so partner can do this OR make appt with HSBC (nearest one 30 mins away) for them to do it
3. the certifier needs to provide even more information than they do to passport office!
4. the certifier may be called to verify these facts

Why???? DH has not had to do this as the named cardholder who is responsible for any debt. Neither of us have ever had to do this to get a credit card. We have no credit issues, live well within our means, and have been cardholders for approaching 10 years with them.

They're offering me £5 worth of points for the inconvenience. It will cost me more than that in petrol and parking to do it.

Any idea why they are doing this? Has this happened to anyone else?

Your DH should telephone them and ask what's going on. JL are shaking up their financial department as they have stopped their own JL credit cards last year.

Yes,
I've just been through it.
It was fine.
I put all of the paper together, popped into my local John Lewis, they verified it and took copies in a matter of seconds - job done.

I have no problem with it : they are lending me up to £8k at a time, they have a right to know who I am and where I am.

Yes but the OP is an additional card holder, i.e. is not the account holder. Her identity is kind of irrelevant to John Lewis.

In fairness it does (now) say " All additional cardholder requests will be subject to satisfactory
ID and address verification checks, and additional documentation may
be required. " but it's more than a bit off to demand this of the additional card holder and not the principal card holder.

I too am the additional cardholder
it was MY identity they wanted to check

because the main cardholder is covered by their standard experian checks
but the additional is not

even though they can spend the same amount of money

Oh sorry TalkinPeace, as you said 'they were lending me up to 8K' I assumed you were the primary card holder.

Googling money laundering regs this does look like new advice to credit card companies, i.e. to reduce the scope of who can be a secondary card holder (such as must live at same address) you need to know who they are.

But I'm not a new cardholder - I've been merrily borrowing thousands every month, and paying it back every month, for nearly a decade, on mundane stuff. I'm clearly not a problem additional cardholder.

I could understand it if I were new but I'm not. They claim this is to protect ME from fraud. And they also admitted on the phone that they verified my identity to their satisfaction back when we took out the card but they just didn't make electronic copies and don't have the old paperwork and now have new rules. So they know from the fact they gave me a card that they proved my identity, but that isn't proof enough that they proved my identity, so I need to prove it...

And I live nowhere near John Lewis any more, and no longer have an HSBC in my village, and Waitrose which I do have close enough appears not to be an option. So now I have to travel miles which will cost way more than the 500 points they're offering or go through a process more onerous than obtaining a bloody passport which is insane.

Anyway it turns out there is no deadline on me to do this - so it's clearly not that important to them anyway which makes the whole preposterous thing even more annoying - so I'm not doing something so inconvenient until they require it.

yup, same here

DH and I have had the card for over 20 years
its in his name for historic reasons

there is indeed no deadline, but they may restrict your limit because they have to comply with the rules

phone them and see what your options are as they are very helpful

I phoned and there was no option other than to wait until it might become more compulsory... I will push them on the Waitrose option as that would make this whole thing much easier (I'm in there 2-3 weeks)

I read a Mary Beard article on this. Apparently her DD is also a cardholder but she hasn't been asked to prove her identity whereas MB has, and she suspects it's because she and her DH have different names but the DD has the DH's name...

Coonicidentally, I don't use the same surname as my DH either. Clearly women are more likely to get up to nefarious things if they don't run their lives according to a 1950s social etiquette manual

every 2-3 weeks

Hmmm, guess what, I do not use DH's surname either

I sense a theme.

I'm actually even more outraged now. Until I can find JL cardholders with the same name being asked to do this, then I'll drop back down just to outraged!

I'll be no use there as lots of my friends use their birth names for work

I remember Mary Beard's blog post about this now.

I would challenge John Lewis about this on Twitter. Are they specifically targeting people with different surnames? Kick up a fuss.