My RBS Saga Begins...

Stipend

Like many on here, I have submitted a complaint about the misselling of PPI to the RBS. Before I get on to them, let me tell you about my experience with Santander.

Santander got in touch with me, out of the blue, to tell me that they may have missold PPI. Over the last 9 years I have had 3 loans with Alliance and Leicester. All now complete, no paperwork, going back years. But hey, what the heck, they've sent me a form to fill in- the work of 5 minutes. Couldn't provide loan refs, so had to give approximate dates, etc. Didn't expect much from it. I mentioned in the comments box that I didn't necessarily want PPI and that I only took it out because it was strongly implied that it would make or break the loan decision. Sent it off.

Within 2 weeks a letter offering me a full rebate, £2300. Would I accept the offer?

Well like a fiend I would! Sent the form back, within 2 weeks the money was electronically transferred to my account.

Now time for RBS...

I decided to try a similar claim with RBS. When I was on hard times in 2004, I took out a consolidation loan with them, at quite a competitive rate of interest, as I was ex-staff (for my sins). Any benefit in the interest rate, however, was wiped out. I paid £262 a month for 42 months. I have since worked out that approximately £47 of this was PPI (a staggering 21.8% of it). This doesn't seem real now! This loan was face to face, and again, there was a feeling that somehow PPI was part and parcel of the acceptance process.

Now, in itself, this might not be strong enough evidence to take to the Ombudsman and claim it was missold. But, in February of 2008, I had an interesting experience when I actually tried to claim on it.

I was made redundant on January 31st 2008 from my job at the time. The company had folded and the gates were pretty much shut behind us as we all walked out. I still had 5 payments to make, at £262 a payment. Time to use that old PPI insurance that I've been stumping up for three years. THe biggest irony of course being that, by this point, I had paid more in PPI payments than was actually left on my bloody loan!

I got the form that was necessary to fill in before I could make a claim. I am not kidding to say it was like War And Peace (a bit like this email then, I can see the more cynical of you thinking!). Amongst the plethora of details they needed from me in order to actually have my payments covered was a signature from my (now ex) manager. A signature! I had a letter confirming my redundancy, but a bloody signature! I didn't know where he lived, and even if I did, did the bank really expect me to start rocking up to my bosses house, when he had just been made redundant too, and begin mithering him for signatures and such. Did I really have TIME to be doing all this, when I was spending most of my free hours in the slightly trivial task of securing future employment?

Suffice to say, as a result of the sheer wealth of information they needed from me, the form never got completed. A cynical person might think that this was designed in order to put people off claiming, but -hey that's me- always thinking the worst of those poor banks.

In light of the PPI Misselling scandal that has now erupted since then, I have no qualms at all in trying to claim back my PPI from RBS. Even if I went into it with my eyes half-open, the hoops they expect a claimant to jump through when they try to claim makes me feel that this was a definite mis-sell!

So I wrote to RBS and sent them the form that you can download from the website. Similar to the Santander form, and similarly filled in, as 2004 is a while ago and I do not have all the information. But I gave them enough to go on.

A week later, I receive a standard letter telling me that they are taking my complaint very seriously. The letter they send, has Mr and then my surname. No initials, nothing to distinguish it from anybody else with my surname. So the letter is opened by my Dad and suddenly aspects of my financial past are there for a third party to see.

So RBS have now potentially breached one of the principles of the Data Protection Act and caused a family row. I was livid. I decide to ring the helpline number on the letter to tell them for God's sake amend my details on any other correspondence. It rings.. and rings... and rings... then hangs me up. Oh they must be busy.
Four days later, numerous phonecalls later. All the same, ringing for five minutes, then cut off.

So I fill in an online complaint form detailing my grievances. I get an email back saying it has been passed to PPI department and predictably I have heard nothing since.

For some reason, I am beginning to picture a huge and empty office space on an unused floor of RBS Towers, with one desk and chair in it. And on the desk is an old fashioned telephone, ringing away to itself; and a dusty sign on a door saying PPI Complaints Dept.

Now it is easy to come on a forum and complain about how useless an organisation is, and vent frustration without actually doing anything about it. I have, however, gone further than that and have gathered some quite compelling evidence that the PPI phoneline is not even manned.

I have compiled a video which, at a running length of 5 hours may not be compelling viewing, but it documents the following:

Before I make the phonecall, I switch on an old analogue style portable radio, and play the Greenwich pips from Radio 4 to confirm the time, I then back this up by panning the camera to the television where I have the date and the time being confirmed by a live Teletext feed. I flick a few channels just to show that it is TV, and not some elaborate pre-recording.

Ok, so that's the time and date confirmed. Time to try phoning that helpline.

A close up of the phone and its keypad (it's an Iphone, so nice big digits). Firstly, I dial 123 and get the O2 speaking clock (other speaking clocks are available). This gives further clarfication of the time, but more importantly it shows that the next call I make is from a real functioning phone, and that -again- there is no pre-recording or video trickery going on.

I then phone the PPI helpline number 0161 755 6890, clearly showing the number dialled, and put it on speaker.


This is what happens then...

It rings solidly for about 5 minutes then automatically hangs up.

I show that I am redialling the same number, and let it ring for another 5 minutes until it hangs again.

I repeat this a third time- for luck.



This then constitutes a 15 minute recording of me failing to get in touch with the helpline.
"Ah well, we were busy, experiencing an unusually high volume of calls", could be the -perfectly reasonable- excuse.

Except, I have repeated the above four times a day, for the last 5 weekdays.

This makes 20 failed attempts, at 15 minutes a time, to get through to a line that has supposedly been set up to help people with PPI enquiries. In my case, I am not even unreasonably chasing money in an impatient fashion, I am simply asking them to alter my details so that their next letter does not cause further damage or distress in the family household.

Personally, I think this stinks to high heaven. I am either the most unfortunate person alive, and have simply managed to catch them at a busy period on all 20 occasions; or this line simply is not manned. My hunch is on the latter, and I think this demonstrates perfectly the contempt that this bank holds its customers in- making a mockery of any pretence that they feel any remorse for mis-selling a product which, even after all the payouts, will still have made them a tidy sum over the years!

Remember, the 20 calls are only what have been documented. This does not include a full week of trying them on and off from my mobile a couple of dozen times and just getting the same dialling tone. I even got two of my friends at work to dial the number simultaneously to me, and they also got the dialling tone.

If there is only the one phone sitting on a desk, then they should have surely got the ENGAGED tone. Since all 3 phones were dialling in at the same time, then we must have all been held in a call handling system, surely? In which case, why no welcome message, why no hold music? Why no confirmation that your call will be answered as soon as possible? A multi-million pound bank and when you call their helpline all you get is "ring ring, ring ring" ad infinitum? Is this the 21st century?

So as far as I am concerned, the gloves are off. I've been in touch with the ICO to report the breach of personal data; I am compiling a more formal and less pithy summary of the above to pass to the Ombudsman, and I am writing to RBS to tell them that, 12 week schedules or not, they better begin engaging with me real soon, or I will be telling anybody who will listen about this whole sorry episode!
Rant over. As you were.

Mark

forresflower

Hi there
I agree they are just ignoring the phones. I have called them previously and had someone lift the phone and put it back down again! I think someone else had posted that if you call when they open at 8am they seem to answer then. Try the CEO email Stephen.Hester@rbs.co.uk. I have already emailed him this week about phones not being answered and varying info being given to customers. I got an email back saying someone would respond to me shortly but if I dont hear by tomorrow I will email again.