RBS student account - they said it was closed!

[bongofish]

Hi

 

This is a bit of an odd situation - i was wondering if anyone has any experience of anything similar...

 

I opened an account with Royal Bank of Scotland in 2001. Being a foolhardy student, i cheerfully spent all of the overdraft and never paid anything in! So eventually, in 2004, RBS had had enough and demanded that the overdraft be repaid, and that i returned my debit card (chopped up) and cheque book to them. This is duly did - i paid off the whole debt and sent back the card and cheque book. I then spoke to an RBS representative on the phone and agreed that, as soon as my final payment into the account cleared (so the account would be at £0), my account would be closed. I confirmed that this was definitely what i wanted - i was banking with someone else by this point.

 

BUT...it seems they never closed the account after all. Instead the account began accruing charges. It started because the account i had carried a fee of £6ish a month to maintain. In the first month since i zeroed the balance, therefore, the account went into debit by around £6. This triggered a charge of £33, for using an unauthorised overdraft. This carried on and on and on, every month, from Sep 2004 til now. This all happened without my knowledge because, coincidentally, the very same month that i paid of my RBS debt, I moved house. Of course, I gave RBS no forwarding address because I believed i was no longer a customer of theirs! So any demand letters etc have gone to an address i haven't lived at for years, and the first i heard of this whole mess was when a credit management service tracked me down at my current address, and wrote to me saying i had to pay £450 for RBS charges or i'd be in court.

 

Is there anything i can do about claiming my RBS charges back?! Unfortunately I was naive and, never having closed a bank account before, didnt realise i ought to have got a confirmation letter saying my account had been closed - all i had was that phone conversation. But surely the fact that i never contacted RBS again, gave them no forwarding address, and never used the account in any way again (after all i had no cheque book or debit card) would support my claim that i believed the account to be closed?? And why would i belive that if it was not what i had been told...?

 

So...anyone got any ideas what my rights might be?

 

Thanks...(and sorry for writing an essay!)

[bram stoker]

Have you contacted RBS explaining all this?

[bongofish]

Yep, just by calling their customer services number... Was told that as far as they're concerned the charges are legitimate (especially as I do not have written proof of the agreement to close the account) but that if i still want to query the charges I should write to them. Which i am about to do, but discovered this forum and thought i'd see if anyone had heard of this before...

[bram stoker]

I suggest you write to the customer complaints department setting out in full the whole circumstances. State that RBS should have a note on their archive systems of the telephone call you made on or around x date. State that it is obvious that you considered the account closed since you ceased to use the account and returned the items requested.

 

Request that they close your account removing all chares that should not have been applied, and remove any notes they have made to credit reference agencies. There's help elsewhere on the site on this (I've no eperience of it personally). Give them 14 days to respond positively to you. Then an LBA if they don't with a further 14 days.

 

In the meantime, check your credit rating and look for what it is needs to be removed. Ensure you get this done, through the court if necessary.

[bongofish]

Thanks for your advice, i'll get writing...