ulster bank mess up

jude1979

a friend from work is really bad with keeping tabs on his current account and has certainly never heard of this site! he puts away a set amount into his account each week on payday to cover his direct debits and the rest he keeps to spend/live on. He printed out a mini statement on monday expecting to have £80 in credit but to he was £75 in the red, his mini statement didn't show anything unusual so i told him to check his full statement at home to see what caused it.

He then tells me he hasn't got a statement from the ulsterbank for ages so i told him to go and see them and ask why he hasn't been getting them.
the girl in the bank went into the back and came out with a huge pile of statements, she said to him "did you ask us to hold these for you" and he said he hadn't. basically the ulster bank hadn't sent him out a single statement in over a year and as he's a so disorganised with banks and money he wouldn't even have noticed them not being sent to him, until something caused him to question his balance at the atm.

basically what has been happening from what i can see is that, his direct debits had been bouncing because he's putting money in on payday which is too late for certain direct debit dates, and he hadn't noticed because he wasn't being sent statements and rarely checked his mini statement. Then he was incurring bank charges ranging from £13-£38, so the next time he put money in it was being swallowed up by the charges, leaving him short for the direct debits and so the whole cycle started again.

the ulster bank didn't give him any notification that they where applying these charges, nor did they attempt to contact him about the problems in his account. the staff also know him and didn't ever make any attempt to give him the statements when he was in the branch each week.

i know he has messed up big style here but i just want to see if anyone agrees with me that the ulster bank are at fault too by not sending his statements to his house!

thanks
j

Chadsman

I would agree UB share some of the blame. If your colleague was to write to them nicely he would have a good case for having at least some of the charges waived.
:beer:

jude1979

thanks for the reply, that's a good idea writing to them about it! i'll suggest that to him and hope he has some luck! i'm determined to get him to move banks once this is sorted out and hopefully this will now have taught him a lesson not to leave his bank account unchecked for so long!

nadnad

yeah dont let him give up on that one. I thought that banks were to notify you if there were going to charge you - especially if its happened a few times. Make sure that he states that he never requested that his statements be held.

jude1979

well i'm glad to say he got a result! they had their own branch address on his statements & they admited that was their fault! they credited his account with £210 so he's pretty pleased.

Thanks for the advice