Is NatWest prejudiced against Polish people?

[NatWest and me]

Hi to All, this is what happened to me in NatWest...

 

I asked NatWest to do a money transfer for me. Despite I have done hundreds of money transfers in the last several years, on this occassion it was denied. The person from NatWest didn't like my passport. She treated me like a criminal, like a sheep. She kept picking at my passport photo, bending the cover to lift the picture trying to see what's underneath it...All the other people who did my transfers before didn't find anything wrong with my passport.

 

I was told that I needed to bring a driving licence. I said that I lost my driving licence and would have to go to Poland to get a new one issued. I was given no choice but to go abroad to bring it.

 

I was forced to take a break from work and went abroad to have my driving licence re-issued. I then flew back into the UK with my passport and driving licence. Passport control didn't see anything wrong with my passport at all.

 

I went back to NatWest and was made to wait for 2 hours. Finally I was seen by the same person as last time and she told me that she didn't want a Polish driving licence. She wanted a British one.

 

The bank manager didn't help me as this person had already spoken to him before about me and so he also treated me not like a person, not like a customer but like cattle.

 

I went to a different branch to have my transfer done. Unfortunately the person from the previous branch had by then put some diminitive comments about my passport/me on the internal NatWest database so now the person who dealt with it had to call the other women for an explanation. As he was on the the phone with her she got him to bend the cover of my passport and pick at the photograph. After around half an hour of that he came back with my passport in one hand and my passport photo in the other. There was not even one "sorry".

 

When I asked him in shock why he did that he said that "This would not happen to a British Passport". I was distressed. I said that if he shows me his I could demonstrate that this can happen to any passport.

 

Despite I know that both British and Polish passports are good (and v. likely the same) quality, what happened made me sad about being Polish, and wishing I had a British passport and not Polish passport. Only later once the shock is over you realise that you were simply discriminated against, you were made to feel this way. I had never been made to feel this way before for the whole 15-16 years of living in this country.

 

I have written to customer services and having received an unsatisfactory answer (everything that had happened was denied) I wrote to the RBS CEO.

 

I wrote to Sir Goodwin since when I called the NatWest call centre they told me that they didn't have a CEO in NatWest and the RBS CEO is the only CEO.

 

I received a reply from Gordon Pell, NatWest Retail Markets CEO, who also wrote that the NatWest people in question denied everything.

 

I walked into a NatWest branch and had my passport defaced. Now I am told by the NatWest Retail Markets CEO that I have no evidence and no one has seen anything. It was of course all recorded on CCTV but the way it's going I can see how the evidence is going to disappear. The CEO have already written to me that they are under no obligation to issue the CCTV footage.

 

If you are planning to walk into a NatWest branch, think about it twice...

 

This USED TO be an ethical organisation. Sadly no more.

[tonycee]

If you want an honest answer its,

no i doubt it very much.

I believe your thread is more discriminative than NatWest have been, and quite contradictory to your own happy 15 year relationship with the bank.

I understand you have had a bad experience, but i hope you can move on soon.

Good luck.

[junk0r]

Sadly, you don't have a leg to stand on, other than starting up a criminal case against them for damage to official documents. Again, there is no direct evidence. I would let your embassy know, and perhaps they'll issue a warning. This is the kind of thing that happens when you let your passport go out of your hand - out of sight is even worse! I often shouted at bank staff in China and stopped them taking my passport away. Always hold onto your passport firmly; apparently, even the British can't be trusted with this kind of document.

[phill123]

hi natwest and me natwest has a funny habit to mock foreign customer trust me i have been insulted more than once about nationality even though apparently i have no right what so ever but of course i have only one right to pay up whenever they feel like it so iwithdraw my bank account with them , and that afte 10 yeares with them . what an awful awful customer services i have no trust in them whatsoever .....