RBS new credit card charges

MSE_Martin

Royal Bank of Scotland is introducing a couple of new charges for all its credit card customers (including those with Natwest or Mint branded cards).

What are the charges?

• £12 for not telling them about a change of address. From May 1, If you move house, forget to inform RBS of your new address, and it receives 2 returned statements, you'll be charged you £12 if they have to trace you down.

• High interest charged for buying gift vouchers. From now on, if you buy gift vouchers (for retail stores such as HMV, Topshop or Amazon), or transfer money with Western Union or similar method (but not Paypal), these transactions will be treated like cash withdrawals from an ATM.
  
  This means that the interest charged for these 'cash' transactions is much higher than for standard 'purchases', a whopping 24.9%, instead of 16.9%.

What can I do about this?

If you have a card from Natwest, RBS or Mint, inform it about change of addresses as soon as you move, to avoid the £12 charge.

To sidestep the second trick, NEVER EVER use one of these cards to buy gift vouchers, or transfer money. If you need to do these things, use a debit card, or a different credit card that won't charge you through the nose.

Why is it introducing these charges?

Credit card companies have been introducing different fees for as long as I can remember. Initially it was due to the introduction of the "0% deals" in around the year 2000 - and they had to be paid for somehow. These days since the OFT dropped the amount card companies can charge for late payment fees to £12 (still too high - see reclaim unfair bank charges and mortgage exit fees), banks have continued to find ways to grab back every penny or pound.

So keep on your toes (and check this site obviously) and know what they are up to and you'll be fine.

Martin

Molanole

V sneaky. I wonder if the charge for money transfers applied to Paypal transactions also?

Former_MSE_Dan

Paypal won't be included, thankfully. Give thanks for small graces.

jillie1974

just another way of banks screwing every last penny they can from us..

---lee---

I don't see what's sneaky about them. You should of course keep all creditors up-to-date with your address, so that ones not an issue. If someone owed me money and moved without telling me I would not be happy and I would imagine it would cost me more than £12 to track them down!

Gift vouchers are essentially cash so why shouldn’t the CC companies treat them as such. I would never buy them anyway - just give cash instead.

I don't fully understand the money transfer point so I won't comment on that.

Call_Centre_Monkey

jillie1974 wrote: »

just another way of banks screwing every last penny they can from us..

What did you expect the banks to do once they lost revenue for late charges? These additional charges were always gonna happen once late charges went down - and expect a similar situation if/when bank charges come down too.

jillie1974

gift vouchers i can understand. where i work we dont take credit cards a form of payment as the payment can be stopped after the vouchers have been used.
personally i dont have any credit cards so doesnt affect me but is a bit sneaky the reasons they are using especially since they all posted mega profits this year already!

jamesd

Lee, a gift voucher can be a convenient way of sending money abroad if you buy one in the destination country. When they can only be used to buy goods they are effectively a delayed purchase of goods, not cash.

Milarky

jamesd wrote: »

Lee, a gift voucher can be a convenient way of sending money abroad if you buy one in the destination country. When they can only be used to buy goods they are effectively a delayed purchase of goods, not cash.

Agreed. Gift Vouchers are not a cash substitute and RBS should not be taking advantage of people who buy them. It is 'sneaky'.

mrsmortenharket

gift vouchers charge, WRONG.

But honestly, change of address. Its a pain in the ar@e (I work for RBS btw!)

There is plenty of time to inform us of changing address. it does cost us in staff time to trace people. On the back of EVERY statement sent there is the opportunity to inform us of changing address plus people can have the post forwarded by the post office for a small fee.

Yes, in all fairness the late charges over limit charges were high. And yes the banks will try & claw money back as much as they can. But IMO, customers must also make an effort as well

Lisa

doitmyself

mrsmortenharket wrote: »

..... But IMO, customers must also make an effort as well

Lisa

Customers make an effort as well!! What can you mean??!