Rant about the bank REPLY FROM BANK ADDED

[Graham Orm]

I bank with Nat West. I have a new Direct Debit just set up to go out on the 13th of the month. I logged on this morning to find that the money has been taken and that the date that it was taken is showing as the 13th....even though today is the 11th!

As it happens it made no difference to anything, and there were surplus funds there to cover it, but had it been my last £300 and I was in a merchants buying materials for a weekend job I would have been knackered.

I rang the bank 24hr business service number and had to wait for 10 minutes listening to a recorded message telling me that the lines were incredibly busy at the moment (at 09:10 on a Saturday). Eventually I got through and explained the situation. The woman explained to me 3 or 4 times, increasingly impatiently, that the bank doesn't recognise weekends and so the money will go on the nearest day, which is today????????????????????

I explained that the DD should go on the 13th, and that the 13th is Monday which is a working day....Saturday is one of the weekend days that the bank doesn't recognise so why has the money been taken on the 11th and shows this morning that it was taken on the 13th. To which she simply repeated the nonsensical statement above....several times, eventually getting frustrated with my stupidity.

I suggested the builders merchant scenario and she said that yes I was correct there would be no funds to cover my situation and yes I would be left high and dry, and yes I would have to ring my customer and tell them that I couldn't do the job because I didn't have any money to buy the materials. Which wouldn't be in the least bit inconvenient or embarrassing......for her or her stinking bank.

I also asked her what if there were no funds in the account this morning and the DD made me overdrawn? She put me at ease over this one, saying that as long as I put the funds in by the 13th when the DD is due to go out there would be no charges.

For ******* ***** ******* sake!!!!!

 

[graduate_owner]

Well, we all just love banks, don't we? So helpful, understanding and generous.

K

 

[Bm101]

Natwest.
Finally fed up with their customer service I transferred my billions to Halifax years back. Didn't close the account because I never got round to it, I was young and forgot about it tbh. My bad but the account was empty.
About a year ago and 5 changes of address later I get some odd phonecalls probing for details. Name address etc I give nothing away and tell them to hop on the old two wheeler and ride to Brighton. Couple of weeks later a get a letter or two. Same thing, trying to confirm my details. Please contact us. Yeh. Ok. Want my passport number too?
So I look this firm up. Have to love google sometimes Lo and behold they are debt collectors employed by guess who. Natwest!
So start the endless phonecalls and letter writing. 25 minutes on hold, transferred, line goes dead. Ad infinitum. All the reasons I dumped 'em in the first place. Finally I get through to their debt advice centre for about the third time but this time actually to someone who can advise me while looking on screen at this 15 year old account. The explanation was mute and garbled. You could hear it in her voice as she realised they had made a massive mistake. 'Oh ... errr.... it looks like interest was accrued.'
I'm a pretty nice fella by rule. I'm done with this though. So I got a bit icy. I explain the account was empty. Therefore I demand they close the account, call off the debtors and issue me with a written statement saying all mistakes made have been made on their part.
'Of course sir. Will take a week to terminate the account and send notice then I will write your letter.'


'Can I ask why you transferred your business to another provider in the first place?'

me: 'Do you want me to answer that honestly in six words?'

'erm. No Sir. Goodbye'

Never got the letter of closure.


Shut the account Graham.

 

[Bm101]

Well, we all just love banks, don't we? So helpful, understanding and generous.

K

Quite, but some are slightly politer than others as they grind you into the dust.

 

[BearTricks]

Reminds me, I have a RBS account that I keep forgetting to close.

I used it as a student account because it had a nice overdraft, then emptied it when I was done and carried on with Nationwide. I might have carried on with them, however on one occasion I was due a refund from them due to a mistake on their part. I was told the refund would be in my account by the end of the day, so thinking nothing of it I went out the next day and used the refund to buy something else. Of course the refund hadn't gone in, I couldn't afford what I wanted and the transaction was declined.

RBS charged me a fiver, or maybe a tenner, for the declined transaction which took me in to negative figures. They then charged me twenty quid for going in to negative figures. I never used them again.

Nationwide, however, have always been fantastic. I only realised the other day how I've never had any problems with them at all. Everything has been plain sailing which is more than I can say for most of the services I use.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I bank with Nat West. I have a new Direct Debit just set up to go out on the 13th of the month. I logged on this morning to find that the money has been taken and that the date that it was taken is showing as the 13th....even though today is the 11th!

As it happens it made no difference to anything, and there were surplus funds there to cover it, but had it been my last £300 and I was in a merchants buying materials for a weekend job I would have been knackered.

I rang the bank 24hr business service number and had to wait for 10 minutes listening to a recorded message telling me that the lines were incredibly busy at the moment (at 09:10 on a Saturday). Eventually I got through and explained the situation. The woman explained to me 3 or 4 times, increasingly impatiently, that the bank doesn't recognise weekends and so the money will go on the nearest day, which is today????????????????????

I explained that the DD should go on the 13th, and that the 13th is Monday which is a working day....Saturday is one of the weekend days that the bank doesn't recognise so why has the money been taken on the 11th and shows this morning that it was taken on the 13th. To which she simply repeated the nonsensical statement above....several times, eventually getting frustrated with my stupidity.

I suggested the builders merchant scenario and she said that yes I was correct there would be no funds to cover my situation and yes I would be left high and dry, and yes I would have to ring my customer and tell them that I couldn't do the job because I didn't have any money to buy the materials. Which wouldn't be in the least bit inconvenient or embarrassing......for her or her stinking bank.

I also asked her what if there were no funds in the account this morning and the DD made me overdrawn? She put me at ease over this one, saying that as long as I put the funds in by the 13th when the DD is due to go out there would be no charges.

For pineapple pineapple's pineapple sake!!!!!

Graham, I've just shown swmbo your post. She worked for HSBC for 30yrs and now works for Handelsbanken. She said you've made a mistake, there is nothing abnormal about this as it is just an advance warning that the payment will be taken on the 13th - it won't have been taken yet. You were unfortunate in getting a moron on the phone who didn't explain it.
Phil.

 

[Roughcut]

I've banked with Natwest for nearly 10 years although I've threatened to go elsewhere on a couple of occasions. :roll:
But yes if I have a Direct Debit due out on the Monday it does leave my account by close of play on Friday.

 

[ColeyS1]

Why do standing orders not go out when you set them ? I have a standing order to dump x amount each week in a 'spending account' each Friday. Bank holiday weekends it doesn't go in till the Tuesday. I assumed it was all computerised. Surely there isn't a person pressing a button for each standing order ?

Coley

 

[NickWelford]

I worked in IT at Barclays for 30 years. Most of the major bank systems are very old now, and creaking at the seams with every change making it worse. They are written in old languages that are difficult to find programmers for nowadays. Rewriting is a mammoth and expensive task frought with danger.

 

[adidat]

On the other side of the coin during my stay in hospital recentley i went quite over drawn and had about £80 in charges. Went into my local branch and after a 5 minute chat all charges where refunded and the worker promising to check my account every week for the next month and refund any other charges! And he was true to his word!

Adidat

 

[MarkDennehy]

The nicest thing about those lovely banks and their lovely direct debits is that if you don't remember to stagger the dates, and you have a DD on (say) the 20th and you also get paid on the 20th; then when doing the reconciliation of the account at the end of the day, they start with the day's beginning balance of the account and try to pay the direct debits and standing orders before adding your paycheque to the account, regardless of what time the paycheque hit your account. Especially on the weekends, when they just make up time intervals willy-nilly. The number of times I've had DDs fail and have to be re-fired and been charged for having insufficient funds (despite having a healthy difference between incoming and outgoing for that day overall) is just fingernail-leveringly annoying.

 

[Graham Orm]

Thanks for the input guys.

Phil - so that money would still have been available if I'd tried to spend it on Saturday?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yes. It's just an advance warning that it will go on the 13th. She said it's a good facility to have, but it was unfortunate you either got crossed wires or a dimwit on the phone that didn't explain it. She actually looked at the document you uploaded.

 

[Graham Orm]

Yes. It's just an advance warning that it will go on the 13th. She said it's a good facility to have, but it was unfortunate you either got crossed wires or a dimwit on the phone that didn't explain it. She actually looked at the document you uploaded.

OK thanks Phil. I emailed my rant to the bank before I'd seen your post, so we'll see what they come back with. I'll let you know if it's anything other than you have described.

 

[mind_the_goat]

The number of times I've had DDs fail and have to be re-fired and been charged for having insufficient funds (despite having a healthy difference between incoming and outgoing for that day overall) is just fingernail-leveringly annoying.

That's not my experience at all, I use Coop and Nationwide and that's never happened. I've also discussed 'unfair' charges with banks on a number of occasions and they generally seem willing to refund if you have a reasonable case.

I emailed my rant to the bank before I'd seen your post, so we'll see what they come back with. I'll let you know if it's anything other than you have described.

It would be pretty hard for them to claim you were overdrawn on the 12th if it was caused by a transaction dated the 13th.

 

[MarkDennehy]

The number of times I've had DDs fail and have to be re-fired and been charged for having insufficient funds (despite having a healthy difference between incoming and outgoing for that day overall) is just fingernail-leveringly annoying.

That's not my experience at all, I use Coop and Nationwide and that's never happened. I've also discussed 'unfair' charges with banks on a number of occasions and they generally seem willing to refund if you have a reasonable case.

Bank of Ireland (yeah, enough said, but AIB was worse) a dozen times before I switched to Ulster Bank. Two or three times there until I had all the DDs and SOs sorted out. And then they fired all their scottish staff who had decades of experience each, outsourced the incredibly old and incredibly poorly-understood-by-modern-graduates software to India where they botched the rollback of an upgrade that went wrong and left us all without a bank at all for a few weeks. Nothing to boost your confidence in your bank like watching an 18-year-old teller try to write down your deposit amount in a copybook with the kind of handwriting that comes of 15 years of SMS and snapchat...

(Oh, and if you ever want a lesson in the futility of life and how we are all mortal and have a finite amount of time on this earth, try complaining to a bank in Ireland about bank charges. Honestly, you'd get further trying to talk a rock into submission. As far as they're concerned, we're not actually people, we're revenue sources...).

 

[Graham Orm]

Reply from the bank:
Thank you for contacting us on 11 June 2016 and for bringing the issue(s) to our attention. I am sorry to hear that you are not happy with the service that we have provided and I do appreciate your patience while I have been investigating your complaint.

Your Complaint and Outcome

Having considered all the information, I agree with your complaint about your Direct Debit to ************* showing as being debited on the weekend when it was due on Monday.

My Investigation

Here is a summary of what I have investigated. I have checked our internal records and can confirm our systems are designed to process Direct Debits, Standing Orders and faster payments at the weekend in readiness for Monday (or Tuesday if Monday is a bank holiday). Therefore Monday payments affect available funds over the weekend. You can obtain a temporary credit over the weekend by calling your Direct Business Banking Team if required, subject to the situation.

Putting Matters Right

Here is a summary of what I have done to fix the issue(s) you have raised. I have provided the appropriate feedback to the Processing Team and can confirm we are planning changes to how our systems process these payments. I will not be awarding any form of redress on this occasion, if there is anything I have not addressed please do not hesitate to contact me. You can also use the Digital Banking Application to see what your account status is.

I do hope that I have been able to resolve matters for you satisfactorily. If you are unhappy with my decision you have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), free of charge, but you must do so within six months of the date of this email. If you do not refer your complaint in time, the Ombudsman will not have our permission to consider your complaint and so will only be able to do so in very limited circumstances. For example, if the Ombudsman believes that the delay was as a result of exceptional circumstances. I have attached a link to their leaflet for your information.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

They obviously move it somewhere in their internal system, as Swmbo said the slip actually shows it as going out on the 13th. It would make sense I suppose to ensure the funds were there at the close of the last working day as the payment probably goes out at 12.01am on the 13th. Odd ... good luck making sense of that.

 

[tomatwark]

I bank with RBS and this thing with DD and standing orders can be a real pain, don't even start on the amount of time it takes for them to clear cheques, it was quicker before computers.

But look another way to look at it, is a faster transfer clears on a Sunday at the moment so if a customer pays you on a Sunday the money is yours straight away, when they change things I bet that everything will be restricted to weekdays.

 

[paulm]

I bank with RBS and this thing with DD and standing orders can be a real pain, don't even start on the amount of time it takes for them to clear cheques, it was quicker before computers.

It's not that they can't clear cheques much faster, they choose not to and take as long as they can get away with as it profits them to use your money in the meantime I believe !