□One Account Open the partner account
Affiliate disclosure. The partner link in the masthead and in the bands beside the copy on this page is a sponsored link to a partner operator, and this site may be paid if you open an account through it, at no extra cost to you. It carries rel="sponsored noopener" and opens in a new tab. That matters on this desk in particular: the subject is the rule that one person holds one account, and this site's own revenue depends on a reader opening an account of their own. There is no ranking, no review and no recommendation of any operator anywhere on this site.
One Account / Myths
Six beliefs, checked

The six beliefs that cost money here

Each of these is a reasonable assumption and an expensive one. None is a claim about intent - every one is a statement about a mechanism that can be checked in the terms that contain it.

Joins the two: one artefact, one person expectedKeeps them apart: a verified fact that differsA person decides: an overlap a household also produces
Direct answerThe six expensive beliefs are that one account each means one account per household, that a shared address or a shared device is enough to link two accounts, that a second account is always deliberate, that a finding means the deposits are kept, that changing a card or a phone number resolves a review, and that a second account at another operator breaches the same rule. Each is checked below against the mechanism that decides it.
False

"One account each means one account per household"

The obligation is written per person, not per address. Two adults in one house each hold their own account lawfully, and the comparison is designed with that case in mind: a shared address, network and device are ambiguous signals that do not decide a pair on their own. What the household genuinely shares is the risk of a review, not a breach.

Partly

"A shared address is enough to link two accounts"

An address alone is not. It is free to compare and weak on its own, which is why ambiguity has its own band. What changes an outcome is a payment instrument in one name funding two accounts - mid-strength on its own and decisive in combination, because it also engages the requirement that deposits come from the holder's own funds.

False

"A second account is always deliberate"

Forgotten logins, changed email addresses, name changes and duplicated registrations all produce duplicates, and they are ordinary administrative problems. The comparison cannot tell them from a deliberate second account, because the signals are identical - which is why raising an accidental duplicate before it is found is the one input a reader controls.

Partly

"A finding means the deposits are kept"

The clause that permits a retention exists, and the ordinary resolution is narrower than a reader fears: deposits into the unrecognised account are normally returned, and what is removed is the growth and any bonus built on play the operator declines to recognise. On the arithmetic used here, growth and bonus were about 71% of the balance and the deposits were returned.

False

"Removing the overlap fixes the review"

Changing the card, the telephone number or the address once a review is open does not remove the overlap the review is about - the comparison already holds both records. A pattern of changes during a review is recorded, and the evidence that actually moves a case is a separating document rather than a corrected field.

Partly

"A second account at another operator breaks the same rule"

It does not. The singularity obligation is per operator, so one person with accounts at five operators holds five lawful relationships, and the comparison that matters is never run across two companies. The same holder is in breach only by opening twice with one of them - accounts per operator, never accounts in total.

What the six have in common

Every one of them comes from the same place: a reader reads about their account, and the rule is written about a person. An account is a screen with a balance on it; the clause is a description of a relationship between an operator and a legal individual, enforced by comparing identifiers neither side of the conversation can see. In that sense this desk is not really about duplicate accounts at all - it is about the difference between the thing a product gives a reader to look at and the thing the terms define.

One number that settles the argument (illustrative) A household of two adults, one operator, one shared debit card, one laptop, two lawful accounts. Joining signals shared: the card = 1. Ambiguous signals shared: address, network, device = 3. Under a decisive threshold of 3 joining signals, the pair does not link. Under a threshold written on overlaps rather than joining signals, it would. Which of those two numbers an operator uses is the single fact that decides this household's position - and it is a fact a reader can read, because the comparison and the threshold are both described in the terms the reader accepted. That is the whole reason this desk is built around a count rather than an accusation.

Read the two that apply to you

A reader with a partner, a flatmate or an adult child on the same address should read the shared household and then the signals. A reader whose account has already been held should read the consequences first and the appeal second, in that order, because the arithmetic and the evidence window are different questions. The remaining pages - the comparison, the rule and the second account - are the reference material behind both.

The belief this desk will not feed. Nothing here is a route to holding two accounts without being noticed, and no page in the series explains how to defeat a comparison. The six beliefs above are corrected so that a reader who is not in breach can say so clearly, with evidence, in the window where saying it still helps.