Help please!!

jinty271

Hope this is ok to post here. I urgently need some advice for my son.

He has left home in Scotland, to work in a hotel down in England. He is 17, and his wages are paid into his Route 21 account he has had with RBS, since he was young. He just visits a local cashpoint.

Over the weekend, RBS cashpoints, and online banking etc all crashed. He attempted to get money,(£50) on 4 occassions. He then rang me to see if I knew what the problem was. I rang CS who explained that there were major issues, but they hoped to have them sorted within the hour.

Lo and behold, after an hour, the cashpoints were fixed. However, my son was left with a balance of £7.

He rang them on Saturday, and the lady told him there were a number of people having problems,and it should rectify itself by today. Today he rang them back, and they are claiming that on each occassion that he tried to withdraw the £50, he got the money..(total of £200, leaving him the £7).

He is now awaiting them sending a form down, something to do with the fraud squad, and he is very worried.

Aside from this, their error has left him without a penny. Luckily, he is in live-in accomodation, and his meals/rent are paid in advance, but lack of beer tokens is making for a very unhappy chappy!!

He used the last of his mobile phone credit today ringing me, so I bought a top up and texted him the code, as he has to ring his branch (up here in Scotland) tomorrow. He also asked the bank if they would allow me to act on his behalf in the branch, but they said no. I think he is worried it wont be resolved, as he is so far away. Any advice on security issues, computer glitches etc, and fraud/error/recovery procedures very very gratefully received.


Also, should he ask for a goodwill gesture when this is all sorted out, or am I just being picky??

Thankyou

Uniscots97

He should ask for compensation. Is he 18 yet? He can ask you to act on his behalf (my parents did it for me when I was abroad while under age of 21) concerning banking matters.

Uniscots97

Can anyone else help here?

tarajayne

All money will be back in accounts by Wednesday, but ALL managers have been told to use there discretion when it comes to helping people who have no money, this would particularily apply to your son as of his age. The branch can therefore let him have for instance £20 until tomorrow.

jinty271

Thanks very much for this.

Can I ask how you know this??

Does it apply to all cases, or is this after the aforementioned reclaim form has been submitted Or have they been able to establish the genuine cases where this has happened, and are refunding automatically?

I ask this because my son has not yet received this form, so even if he received it tomorrow (he is woring away down south), it will be at least Friday before the branch receive it.

tarajayne

There is no form to be filled in, apparently, according to the internal fax I read yesterday the system is aware of the customers who did not receive their cash and they will all be refunded by Wednesday, we were to do nothing in branch apart from apologise and use discretion if we felt a customer needed the cash urgently. I work in a branch part-time, not something I'm particularily proud of but we all need to work.

jinty271

Thankyou very much for posting this, I have texted my son, and he will try the cashpoint today.

jinty271

He received £150 back of the money today. He will fill the form in to try to reclaim the other £50, but at least the immediate crisis is over. Thanks for all who took the trouble to advise

Homework

It's terrible that your son was left without money for this period of time when the bank knew there was a problem that was being fixed. Although an adult at 17, he was away from home and what was that talk about the fraud squad and forms?

Someone asked recently what use branches were. Branches used to be places where people could go and get advice or a straight answer without hiding behind call centres where you don't get the same person twice. The manager had discretion to look at the situation and make a decision.

I'd like to think that if your son had gone into a branch where they knew there was a problem and he was a young person away from home (who I assume had an otherwise good banking history) that he would have been not sent away to wait for forms to fill in or am I just being nostalgic?

tarajayne

Judging by my new manager, very nostalgic. My manager who recently left, now she would have given him a tenner from her own pocket, speaks for itself really. bearing in mind though that he's only 20 himself!