Mike's Flying

So, no word back from natwest as of yet.

But unfortunately I’ve cause to write them -another- letter.

All will be explained within.

Unhappy Mike.

Ahh, NatWest Complaints department.

We meet again.

I’m not sure if you remember by letter dated XX-XXX-2010, but it’s ok because I’ll summarise it for you here.

You vanished my account. After I’d taken action and agreed a repayment plan to cover the arrears you cited as the reason for locking my account. It took two days, several phone calls, even a branch visit to get my account back again. I was unhappy and I stated this in a phone-call to your collections department when I was trying to regain access to my funds. I even wrote the aforementioned letter of complaint.

So, with assurances from your collections department – after they admitted that it was a fault in their operation/system that caused my repayment agreement to not be recorded properly – I continued to use my NatWest account.

I cleared the arrears on Friday 11^th June – paying a sum £88.45 as per my repayment agreement. Everything went through just dandy. Tell me then why, after filling my car with petrol, I have my card declined at the cashiers? Actually, don’t go explaining that just yet – I’ve got more joy and juice for you.

I’m not an unintelligent guy, I learn my lesson quickly. Rather than calling your phone banking team, getting sent into my branch and from there being told to call collections – I simply called collections. I understand this is unorthodox, and usually you make customers traipse around all the other systems that can do little for them until you give the coveted number of the one department that seems to be able to fix anything. For this I apologise.

Normally I like a good game, I really am sorry to deprive you of your howlers, but this day I wasn’t in the mood. I owed £30 in petrol to a garage and I knew I had that money in my account, and that I was clear of any arrears. I’d be told the very same just two days previously.

So, feeling like a big spoil-sport, I called your collections department. I spoke to Ian (time was 6:10pm, 11^th June 2010). I liked Ian, he was very helpful – thank him on my behalf would you? I would, but I fear I’d have to make at least one branch visit in order to speak to him and I simply haven’t the time. I digress. Ian informed me, in his and my bemusement, that not one lump of £88.45 had been paid, but simultaneously to my card payment the same sum had been transferred into my loan from my current account (that’s £176.90 in case you’re wondering). Now, I don’t know about you, but taking money like that without any instruction or permission is, oh now, what is that term again?

Anyway, to add to your losing my account for two days, let us add taking monies without instruction. Oh would that that were all the items on my list.

 Because, alas, there’s more (amazing how these things can stack up, isn’t it?). Ian, bless his cotton socks, also informed me that my account was locked. Luckily it wasn’t disappeared, which seemingly is your standard action on my account. Why was my account locked? I hear you ask – go on, ask! No-one here will judge you.

Well my account was locked because I was, and this really cracks me up, in arrears on my loan.

Lo, the almighty system has told Ian, and Ian has told me that I wasn’t merely in arrears for the one month’s payment (which I’d now settled), but that somewhere I’d actually missed two! Oh the mortification! I felt terrible, it was such a shock. But wait, both payments were missing a good two weeks even before my account was disappeared/locked for the first time.

How can it be that it took your system almost two months to vanish/lock my account for the first missed month (I remind you, no phone-calls, no texts, no emails, no letters), yet less than two weeks for the second? How, then, can the nice lady who arranged my repayment plan the first time a good week after I’d missed the second payment not know about it? Just how broken is your system?

Currently NatWest have caused me two days without access to my money, in turn causing grossly unfair and unwarranted stress and anxiety about my ability to access funds vital to my day to day existence and you’ve failed to alert me to a major misdemeanour on my part. In the course of these failings, I’ve expended unreasonable effort, time and expense in chasing NatWest to resolve problems that I’ve not caused. Further to this, you then validated my anxieties about the security of my funds by taking monies from my account without permission or instruction, and once again locking my account despite my, to the best of our combined knowledge at the time, having paid off all arrears on the account.

My confidence in NatWest has all but evaporated, and I’m currently looking at alternative companies to move my current account, loan and overdraft facilities into the care of.

Is there anything NatWest is willing to do to attempt compensation for the anxiety, stress, inconvenience, expense and time I’ve spent dealing with your failings as a banking provider? All are very real damages to a once loyal and long standing customer.

I look forward to receiving and replying to your stock apology

It won’t be enough, not by a long way.

Yours Faithfully,

Mike