I am in desperate need of a copy of the terms and conditions of an RBS Student Royalties Account from 2006. I completed an honours degree, a post grad and will be doing my Masters in September. I have received a letter stating the T&C's have changed for the Student Royalties account and I now have to deposit 750 pounds every 3 months and make 9 debit transactions starting in October. There is no way I can do this. I have 2 children! Firstly does anyone have an old copy and secondly can a bank change an agreement just like that? Please help.

firstly, if you're using your real name then I suggest that you get it changed. E-mail us on the admin address to get something a bit more anonymous.

The bank reserves to itself the right to vary the contract from time to time. All banks do this. My view is that this right to vary the contract is frequently abused because I think that there are differences in variations which need to be made to adapt to new law or to market conditions and out right changes for no good reason and which simply changed the nature of the contract/account.

If these requirements about depositing a certain minimum and the number debit transactions weren't in place before – then it may be that these are more than mere variations. However, dealing with any bank and certainly dealing with The Royal Bank of Scotland is like trying to shout a deaf person who is preoccupied something else anyway.

They don't care about you. They don't care what you say. They're bigger than you and although they clearly have a history of being badly run, there is not enough competition to make more to set up and take care of their customers. The point of this is to say that there is no use complaining to them about this change and expecting them to take any notice.

In this circumstance I'm afraid that the only thing you could think of doing would be to make a formal complaint about and to insist that the complaint goes before the ombudsman. Even that is almost a waste time because the ombudsman has got no bottle deal seriously with any of the banks. They mock the ombudsman and run rings round him. You could settle down for a wait between 12 months and two years some mediocre reluctant linguistic decision to be given by the ombudsman – which probably will go against you in this case because for the ombudsman to challenge the abuse of the banks contractual right to vary contracts would be a step too far for the banks – and the ombudsman would know this and would not want to go down that route.

I really don't know what else to say. The only other thing you can do is to try and downgrade your contract/account – look elsewhere. All very unsatisfactory – but the bank really won't care.