Hello

[martyn bernardo]

Hello, ive just joined the consumer action group and will soon be starting to reclaim the unfair charges aplied by the Royal Bank Of Scotland on my account. My partner and i have been customers of the RBS for over 10 years, in 2004 we took a morgage with them,bad mistake, we found out 6 months later that the information given to us by their morgage advisor was incorrect amongst numerous other incompetancies which included cancelling our life insurance. when we aproached them regarding the life insurance their advisor said 'oops, these things happen dont they' . they ignored the complaint made about the mis selling of the morgage until in feb this year, i stormed into the bank with a letter of complaint, an appointment was made with the manager who couldnt believe the treatment we had been subjected to. the complaint went on to their customer relations dept, 2 months later we recieved a 'final response' this was a letter detailing the complaint and their response to each point, it stated they wouldnt believe their ex employee would have given us incorrect info but unfortunately couldnt find any documents relating to the selling of the morgage to us they however apologised and offered £250 in compensation. the letter was filled with inaccuracies and lies, so phoned the originator of the letter, i went through it with her and at the end of the conversation she said ' i'm sat here shaking my head because i cant believe what your telling me as it has no bearing on the information i was given by the branch. i am so sorry for the treatment you have recieved and the upset you have been caused'. she offered to re-look at the complaint, 2 months later she left me a message stating 'im sorry it has taken so long but i have been unable to get any further information and suggest you take your complaint to the banking ombusman'.

Whilst we have been going through this period we found out about unfair charging, as this was part of the original complaint. during the first 14 months of the morgage we were charged £1079, about 4 months ago i asked for copies of all charges applied to our account for the last six years they said they couldnt send this but would sent all statements for this period. they sent us five years worth of statements and the charges added up to over £3000, this doesnt include the above charges applied to the morgage account.it also doesnt include the £476 charges they have applied since.

Sorry that was a bit long winded but ive tried to shorten it as much as i can, We would be grateful for any tips or comments anyone can give us. we havent gone any further with the morgage complaint as of yet as the bank left us in such a vulnerable position weve spent the last six months just trying to keep afloat, weve made it though and now feel we are in a position to fight them starting with the unfair charging. Martyn and Charlotte

[thewifeandI]

Hi - take a bit of time to read up first to make sure that you have the facts before going too far ahead. Read the FAQs and template letters then have a good read around here to see how others are getting on. Keep any progress on your own claim or questions that arise in a new thread in the forum for your bank to make it easier for others to follow and advise you. There's a set of links in my sig below that will help you find where all this useful information is. Well done for getting started!

 

Apologies for the slowness of the site today - recent publicity has made us very popular!

 

In my opinion you should start by reclaiming all the unlawful penalty charges on the bank account(s) as per the FAQs. Once you have that underway then make your complaint to the Ombudsman on the mortgage/insurance problems. You might be able to get the mortgage account charges sorted out by him at the same time, but if not then start a reclaim action on that account as well (but leave it until the Ombudsman has done whatever he can do).

 

Start a post in the RBS forum for the best advice on dealing with them.

[martyn bernardo]

thanks for that advice, it answers another question i had.

martyn