@rbs_mediateam Royalties Gold Account Unfair Charges Refunded

[ch114275]

Over the last 12 months I have had a total of £1008 worth of charges refunded by RBS along with compensation for the distress that this has caused me. I have also forced them to amend my credit file with all the major agencies in order to reflect the true picture of my finances, as they were reporting my "overdraft" to them.

 

In August of 2011 I visited my branch in order to amend my address. At the time I had a Select Silver account with the bank which I had hardly used on a regular basis. I was persuaded to upgrade this to a Royalties Gold account, as the benefits of this account were more suited to my needs. The RBS failed to update my address properly and I did not receive any correspondence from them at all for a number of weeks. When I queried this again I was told that my address held on file by the bank was my actual branch address and that I would need to visit my branch again to amend my address. I did this on a further two occasions in December and January until I finally managed to get my address changed.

 

I had happily paid the £12.95 monthly fee but forgot to transfer money into the account in September to cover this monthly charge.

 

This made my account overdrawn by £8.13 and I was charged at a daily rate of £6 for this unauthorised overdraft. As I hadn't received any notification of these charges and was not an online banking customer, I was unaware that a debt of £968 had built up because of these daily charges.

 

I contacted EQUIFAX to request access to my credit file, which is another benefit of the account package, I was basically accused of fraud because I had my address down as my branch address. They refused to deal with me any further until I had completed their identity verification procedure, which I duly did. It was only then that I saw the RBS had reported this debt to them and by registering my address as their branch they had caused a CIFAS flag to be placed on my credit file. I contacted and raised a complaint about this with them, which was resolved almost immediately and with minimal effort on my part. However, I was still left with a debt of almost a thousand pounds through no real fault of my own.

 

I then received a flurry of letters and telephone calls from RBS demanding that I pay these charges or they would refer my account to a debt collection agency. My account had already been passed to their collections team in Birmingham who had put a stop on my debit card and cancelled my cheque book without even contacting me, even though they had my mobile phone number on record throughout this whole period. I contacted RBS again as soon as the first letter arrived and spoke to a very apologetic advisor who agreed that it seemed a little unfair that this level of charges had been applied to the account through no fault of my own. He then offered to reduce the amount to £480 as a "gesture of goodwill". I refused to accept this and raised a complaint with the customer service team.

 

I waited over a week then called again, as I had received no reply to my complaint. I spoke again to the collections team and reminded them that they have a duty to treat their customers fairly under BCOBS. I stated clearly that there was nothing in the terms and conditions that I had agreed to which allowed them to treat their own charges as unauthorised borrowing and by doing so they were being unfair in their favour by allowing a debt of £968 to build up. I put all of this in writing to them and received a phone call within 3 days saying that they would be refunding the total amount of charges along with a payment of £40 as compensation for their error, re-instating my debit card facility and sending a new cheque book out in the post.

 

However, to date despite 12 requests and 3 complaints I am still to receive my Royalties Gold welcome pack, detailing my membership benefits in full but I suppose this is a minor issue in relation to the issue I have described above.

 

I feel personally that this is nothing short of attempted theft by RBS and am sure that many unwitting customers have simply accepted the charges and paid up in full to clear their debt and credit file. I also feel that this is extremely poor administration by RBS over a simple issue that they could have resolved quite easily. I believe that they tried to take advantage of the situation on my account and acted irresponsibly by allowing such a debt to build up without contacting me.

 

I would urge other users to fight this issue vigorously to stop this bank from using their customers to recoup their losses or shore up their £2bn in profits!

[BankFodder]

Congratulations and well done on your tenacity.

 

Yes, the stories which we hear all suggest that RBS is a shocking bank and along with NatWest they are probably the two poorly run and unfair banks in the whole pile. A great shame when you think that they are owned by us.

 

They seem to have acquired the nationalised industry mentality very quickly.

 

I am very pleased that the BCOBS arguments seem to have worked but what a shame that anyone should have to take this trouble simply to get the service which you are paying for. Sir Stephen Hester is already getting a huge amount of money for managing the bank. It is a shame that it seems that his customers have to help out with the management as well - and for free.

 

I completely agree that people should avoid this bank and find somewhere else to take their banking business.

[huggy41]

i am so glad a read this as Halifax are in for a shock.