NATWEST Loyalty = punitive charges

Ray42

Dear all,

Been on holiday recently but before I went I set up payments for all my bills using my online banking facility, something I have done for years now so second nature. Halfway through the holiday I noticed that more money was left in my current account than should have been at that stage (31st July). I jumped on a computer and logged in to my bank to find that something had gone wrong with the payments I set up and they were not there. No big deal I just put them in as immediate payments making sure each one was at least what I remembered the bill to be. In the case of my NATWEST Card I paid £1k (turns out there was only £697 due). My NATWEST card was due on 31st and I had set it up to be paid on 25th originally to ensure it clears on time. I have had this card for many years (I collect airmiles) and have always settled in full each month and never paid a penny in interest.

I got my statement at the end of last week and to my surprise I have been charged £12 for late payment and £23.70 in interest. I therefore logged in to the Natwest site and used their customer feedback to say how unhappy I was. They replied today advising me to call thier customer helpline since they cannot access any account details from that department. After a long time on the phone today with most of it spent listening to badly recorded music whilst the 'helpline' discussed amongst themselves the merits of my complaint I finally received the reply 'we will not cancel any of the cgharges since they are valid, the reason the interest is such a high amount is because it is for the whole time of the purchase not just the 3 days that your payment was late'. After further discussions and them having a chat with the 'manager' they refused to keep this loyal and credit worthy custonmer happy. My final parting shot was 'this has cost me £35.70 but its going to cost NATWEST the profit on all my future credit card purchases because I am going to shred your card and use another company, thank you and goodbye'.

So being a loyal customer to NATWEST counts for NIL.

I now intend taking out an airmiles card to collect my airmiles (unless someone knows of a better one for airmiles). In the meantime I will use one of my other credit cards.

PS, how do you get these smily things into your text ?

jadejie

sorry to hear your story.....i did have similar problem but i went into the bank and had a word with the bank manager, and he refunded me straight away!....the smily things, you get it when you "go Advanced"....

regularsaver1

may be worth you complaining further - as this late payment may show on your credit file too

Mark7799

Are you aware that AirMiles credit cards are run through NatWest/RBS?

M_Thomson

So what went wrong with the payment you set up?

Astaroth

The airmiles rules used to be that there could only be one provider within a single industry so the only credit card issuer that can give airmiles is the RBS Group. The rules could of cause of changed since "my day" though

Katmoo

They are all people squeezing machines, I hate the big banks. Poor you. There is no such thing as loyalty to long-standing customers unfortunately, with any finance company / bank.

I had a similar experience - always been a good payer, on time etc, always had a good credit rating. I went over-drawn once by 19p (yes 19 whole pence) and they charged me £25 unauthorised borrowing fee, plus the letter charge (can't remember now I think it was £15). So I went into the branch and asked the first employee I saw very politely to justify forty quids worth of penalties for going a whole 19 pence over-drawn, and of course she couldn't, so they did to their credit wipe it off 'just this once'.

It still left me fuming.
It may be worth taking it further.