Has NatWest changed?? or am I going mad?

noizeuk

The suggestion to raise a complaint is fine should you be unhappy and it is a good way for NatWest to track customers wants/needs/ongoing issues. However, how is it actually affecting you? At the end of the day - not to sound harsh or anything - it is your responsibility to manage your own accounts. If the information isn't there, maintain personal records and reconcile these with your accounts. The most you will get is an apology because it really does not affect you in any financial way.

OP - I use HomeBank/GNUCash which is free accounts software which is offline and loads NW's database files (I think it accepts CSV). You can add a transaction and reconcile it once it has cleared. Plus it allows you to categorise your spending etc. [take care when importing new files, you may see an overlap with cleared POS which you have already reconciled]

Mimi_Arc_en_ciel

I’ll try and explain it for you...
I have my budget on a spreadsheet. Each day i know what i have spent, where i have spent it etc.
This ALWAYS tallied with my Natwest bank.
Now though, I am putting in my budget £20 4th Feb, petrol..... but my natwest account does not say this. It shows that on the 4th Feb I spent nothing.
On my budget for the 5th feb it could potentially say that i spent £10 on elec. My NatWest doesn’t say this either
On the 6th Feb i know I didn’t use my card.... my Natwest account says that I spent £30
I’m trying to monitor my account but this is not something that I am going to be able to do daily now and it means that I will now have to do it weekly and try and work out what payment is for what because Natwest have removed the pending feature.
It’s the same with refunds.... if i was expecting 2 refunds, and only one went in, before i would know which one it was. Now it doesn’t show until a few days after which is annoying.
I think it will also be a pain when I have cheques due out. I won’t know which cheque has been paid if there is another for the same amount until the system updates.
It might not seem a big issue to some, but clearly it is - there isn’t just me saying this will be a problem
Yes, I could sit there at the end of the week with no end of reciepts and spend an hour going through everything..... but i didnt have to do this when they had the pending transaction feature.

Natwest have said it is because "a large number of customers didnt want this feature" - well, theres also a large number of people who did (There are people complaining on the Natwest webpage too)

I dont want to change the way i monitor my account (Selfish i know) but i can access my excel file anywhere at any time without being charged roaming charges if i am abroad. I've used the file for a number of years (5 at least) and the pending feature helped me. I'm sure others are the same.

pmduk

It's obviously a personal opinion as to how useful it is, but whichever way you look at it, it's really bad practice to just change things without warning to either customers or staff,.