RBS Inertia Selling?

joineeandyj

I've been away at university and have two current accounts with Royal Bank of Scotland. One is a student account, the other WAS a Route 21 account. Whilst I was away at uni my parents would forward mail every few weeks or so and last week before I left Hull I received a notice of a 9.60 service charge on (what I thought was) my Route21. So I went into the Hull branch and said "what's this for?" after much head scratching they worked out that "as a courtesy" they'd upgraded my account to a Gold Account. I didn't find it very coureous, particularly considering I have no job and as far as I'm aware a Gold account requires customers to earn 20,000 a year.

Having then asked them to change it to a normal account they told me to go into my local branch as they couldn't do anything - irritation number two!

So at the weekend I return to Southport,have to wait til Tuesday due to the bank holiday. I go in and say give me my monies back, don't charge me for going over 0 in that account (as a result of their charge) and change it to a normal account. I'm told that no charges wuold come out and I would stay above zero.

I walk away.

Today I receive a notification of service charge. Same bank account, no longer Gold, but still charging me. It took me over zero, which means a £10 charge will be issued before long.

Calmly I go to the bank and say "what's going on?!" and explain it to somebody else who just takes my papers and says she sort it out. I didn't take copies of them, I'm clearly an idiot, and I hope she posts them back to me, but she said she'd cancel charges, refund the money and void the charge for going over zero.

All the while the various bank staff say "well you should've said you didn't want a Gold account when we upgraded you".

My question: How legal is it for a bank to do this? Does it count as inertia selling? My student account is overdrawn so I can't close that account yet, but can anybody offer any words of wisdom?

Thanks, Andy