I've had a letter from RBS headed "Information regarding an account you may have previously held with us".

It says they are writing in relation to an account which "you may have held with us in the past and is now closed", and goes on to read, "There is a possibility we owe you a refund on this account which we would like to discuss with you", and goes on to provide phone number and contact details.

Now the thing is I did have an account but effectively abandoned it after it went overdrawn following a direct debit which was taken out a day early, and after the bank refused to repay and I refused to pay the money in to cover the o/d, they continued to add charge after charge and the last I heard it was around £800 overdrawn, all of which were charges. This was around 6 years ago so it could be statute barred by now anyway but I have no records and have since moved house.

Question is, is this a ploy by RBS to try to confirm that they have "found" me so that they can (try to) pursue me for the debt rather than offer me a refund? Has anybody else had a similar letter?

It's come from the "Customer Refund Team", Chatham in Kent.

Anybody?

Hello!

I've had exactly the same letter, and under the same sort of circumstances (that as far as I know I owe them money not the other way round). My debt is due to be statute barred in about 3 months so I won't be contacting them until after that to find out!

I'll be VERY interested to hear the outcome of this!

Thanks for the reply.

I can't remember the date I "dropped" the account but it could be statute barred, or just coming up to that point so it might be a last-ditch effort to try to recover the "debt" - I use inverted commas since it's all charges so as far as I am concerned no debt exists.

It does pretty much sound like they are using it as a ploy then to get us to confirm that it is the same person at the new address. I can't for the life of me see a bank making a concerted effort to try and locate somebody who they owe money to so I doubt very much if I will be chasing it up.

Yeah I thought they wouldn't bother making a concerted effort either, but a bit of googling does show that RBS/Natwest are making proactive efforts to reunited customers and cash. A bit weird, I know, but it does seem to be happening.

I've decided to wait until the debt is statute barred and then contact them to see what they've got to say for themselves. Might be a nice surprise, might not.

What I did wonder though, is, if its a method to try to contact us to get their money back from us, then wouldn't the FOS deem it unfair to send a letter to us saying "there is a possibility we may owe you a refund" when the bank KNOWS this isn't the case?

Just a thought!

Yes I wondered about that too, isn't it some form of entrapment? If they do owe us anything then they would know, there is no "may". Thing is though, while the FOS might deem it unfair it would get not us out of the situation that they would now know where we are.

I had hoped a lot more people would reply who had received something similar to be honest, to give us a bit more to go off but I might send for my credit reference file to see what dates are on it.

You may find my thread on this at the Money Saving Expert forum of interest -: forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=61315039&posted=1#post61315039

I've posted more information on what I may do about it, over there

Thanks, that's useful. I have to admit I never considered that there might be a genuine refund of charges which would still leave any debt owing (though in my case as previously stated it's entirely made up of charges).

Re: the statute barred issue, as far as I am aware once it's SB that's that, there is nothing they can do. You could even phone up and gloat about it the day after if you wanted to.

Not wanting to go off topic but it's relevant to the SB issue - I'm still being chased for a debt that never existed from over 10 years ago - car sent back after I had paid the relevant amount on HP but the company NEVER accepted that it was my right to terminate the agreement and have chased me ever since. I found out recently that a CCJ had been issued against me in 2010 (but at my old address so easy enough to get rid of it when i get around to it) despite the fact that I haven't acknowledged and "debt" to them in over 8 years.

I did write a few times to the DCA to advise them it was statute barred, which they eventually accepted, yet they are still sending me reminders!

Thats definitely very interesting about the fact that the debt cannot be revived. I wasn't certain about that, but that link seems to clear that issue up nicely!

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/ihtmanual/ihtm28384.htm

Brief details here on SB:

"If a lender allows time to pass without receiving any payment an action for recovery may become barred.

Under the Limitations Act 1980 the time limits are

in simple contracts, 6 years

in contracts under seal, 12 years.

Although I'm not sure what it means by "....may become barred."

Anyway my RBS letter has gone in the shredder.

Mine has just gone in the bin as well!