NatWest - FSA Rules broken

SeniorSam

Not sure if this is the right place to ask for advice on this particular subject. My wife and I are over 70 and have several ISA accounts in various places. We both invested in Cash ISA's with NatWest over a year ago and in February applied through nother company to transfer part of those ISA's to equity ISA's

My own transfer took place 12th March, but my wife's did not. When the new company contacted NatWest again, they refused to discuss anything about the transfer request they had received and said they would be contacting my wife. They have not done this.

I sent a letter of complaint signed by my wife and I and delivered it to the bank on the 6th April. The following week 10th March, my wife and I went to NatWest in Solihull to try and discuss this with the bank, but the manager would not see us and refused to speak with us and said the letter had been sent to head office and they would be dealing with the complaint.

I tried to discuss this on line with NatWest and after the initial contact and discussion of the facts, they said it had been passed to the complaints department who woul d be in touch. So far they have also not been in touch.

I was under the impression that the FSA rules required the complainant to receive a letter of acknowledgement with 7 working days. This has not happened.

What are my wife's rights on this as she cannot make a complaint to the Ombudsman as the initial complaint has not been dealt with. My wife is very depressed over this and is now seeking medical attention.

Sam

pmduk

The bank have 8 weeks in which to deal with the complaint. At that stage you can complain to the FOS, even if you've heard nothing from them. It's more or less a waiting game I'm afraid.

MPH80

My wife is very depressed over this and is now seeking medical attention.

You've been given the right timelines already - but I want to pick up on this.

If your wife is getting depressed over the lack of transfer for an ISA ... you need to help her get some perspective.

You said yourself you have multiple ISAs ... so this is one of many ... so SOME of your money - and it hasn't disappeared - it just hasn't been transferred.

This is not life and death - and it isn't something to get depressed over.

Just as an aside - to give some perspective - I've recently had an ISA transfer go badly where the original bank refused to acknowledge I had an account at all - now that was the vast majority of my savings and neither company would talk to me! Yet I didn't worry ... persisted ... and got the transfer sorted. Money is not worth fretting about.

meer53

The manager confirmed that they had your letter of complaint already and that it was being dealt with, why do you now need a letter to confirm this again ?

If you haven't heard from Natwest within 8 weeks, take this up with the FOS. I'm sure it will be sorted out before then. It really isn't worth getting depressed over.

JuicyJesus

meer53 wrote: »

The manager confirmed that they had your letter of complaint already and that it was being dealt with, why do you now need a letter to confirm this again ?

In fairness to the OP, FSA (now FCA) guidelines do say that "you must send the complainant a prompt written acknowledgement that the complaint has been received and is being dealt with". So NatWest are in the wrong there, and, yes, in breach of FS/CA guidelines. Should it get that far, this will not be smiled upon by the FOS.

However, they have acknowledged they've received the complaint and that it is being dealt with. If the OP wishes to get a written acknowledgement, a polite letter to the NatWest complaints department directly (NOT the branch) will most likely get this generated. But complaints take time to investigate, especially ones like this which likely involve the internal machinations of two entirely separate banking institutions who may well not want to co-operate as well as you might want them to, so I doubt it would get anything resolved any quicker.

As said above though, they do have 8 weeks to resolve any complaint before you can escalate it to the Ombudsman (which will take months or even years - my own complaint is still going through over a year after I raised it) and to get depressed over a clerical error is, while sad, quite silly.

MPH80

"Prompt" is ambiguous though.

The letter was delivered on a Saturday to the branch (assumption here from the OP's post) ... let's assume the bank then put that in the internal post (let's be generous and assume they didn't second class post it!) - and that was collected Monday night ... so it arrived at the central complaints department on the Tuesday at the earliest.

Let's also make an assumption that it went into the master in pile ... so it would be opened (probably) Wednesday or Thursday. It probably needs to move department to be with the ISA department - so let's assume it hits the right place on Friday. If you're lucky - it gets opened that day.

Any acknowledgement would then be sent second class.

For it not to have arrived by now would be a bit late ... given we're a week on from that point - but we're talking about 10 working days that have elapsed since the complaint was delivered to the bank (which is not who will deal with it!). I'd consider a turnaround within 7 working days 'good' personally. So 10 isn't bad.

M.