MSE News: Hit by latest NatWest and RBS meltdown? Get your charges back

Paul_B.

Sammie20131 wrote: »

I am thinking about moving to Barclays these last 18 months I have had my interest free overdraft buffer removed, charges hiked, ISA interest rate cut in half and these IT issues 3 times.

I am worried about closing an account that I have held for 5 years and moving to someone else. May I ask, will closing my account affect my credit file, are Barclays any better or am I just moving from one issue bank to another?? Please help

Closing the account shouldn't have any effect on your credit rating, you can even use the new switching service which moves your account in 7 days including direct debits, the most attractive reason I thought was that it redirects payments for 13 months after you move so any payments sent to your old account go to your new one.

scottishminnie

dazzammm wrote: »

its no coincidence that the problems have occured since the UK staff who looked after the system (20+ yrs IT experience each) were replaced by offshore graduates (the entire TEAM dont have 10 years IT experience!)

its the same across all banks, retails, insurance companies, utility companies - guys who have been there decades and averted these types of disasters many times over being replaced by offshore people straight out of university with next to no experience and definatley no experience of averting these kind of problems. all in the name of cost cutting / increasing profits.

there are thousands of these guys who have been out of work for years or have had to find new careers who could have solved the problem in half an hour.

Ask yourself - did we have this many IT glitches 5 years ago?

spot on dazzammm. It may have happened to RBS on this occasion however many of the other banks are in exactly the same position through lack of investment and loss of knowledge.

If customers feel the need to switch after this latest incident they are entirely within their rights to do so however sadly none of the banks are even close to being immune to this.

Gordon_the_Moron

Sammie20131 wrote: »

I am thinking about moving to Barclays these last 18 months I have had my interest free overdraft buffer removed, charges hiked, ISA interest rate cut in half and these IT issues 3 times.

I am worried about closing an account that I have held for 5 years and moving to someone else. May I ask, will closing my account affect my credit file, are Barclays any better or am I just moving from one issue bank to another?? Please help

All very good reasons to switch (along with the Natwest/RBS current account offerings being pants)

That said I wouldn't go with Barclays personally, first their current account offering is no better than Natwest/RBS.

Secondly from my experience their branch customer service is worse than Natwest/RBS (I can only speak for the ones local to me) but when I went in they were always a lot slower serving you. I'm with Santander and don't believe all the crap about their service being so bad, they are fine for me.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/compare-best-bank-accounts
Have a look here for the best deals.

VT82

dazzammm wrote: »

its no coincidence that the problems have occured since the UK staff who looked after the system (20+ yrs IT experience each) were replaced by offshore graduates (the entire TEAM dont have 10 years IT experience!)

there are thousands of these guys who have been out of work for years or have had to find new careers who could have solved the problem in half an hour.

By that logic, the IT people over the last 20 years are responsible for not having had the gumption to point out that the legacy systems needed an overhaul or they would eventually fail.

Planting a poison pill - forcing yourself to become indispensable to your employer, by allowing flaws that only you can fix to remain in place, might work most of the time to keep you in the job, but it doesn't mean it's right.

kezzajane

Please don't take your frustrations out on the staff who work in your local branch - it is not their fault & if you speak to them nicely, you will more than likely find they will do everything they can to help you. Don't confuse them with the big city boys ...they are just 'normal' people like you, they don't drive porsches & unfortunately can't wave a magic wand & make everything ok for you but they will try.

SnowMan

MSE_Helen wrote: »

MSE News: Hit by latest NatWest and RBS meltdown? Get your charges back

There's nothing worse than a meltdown :snow_grin

Blue88

MSE_Helen wrote: »

RBS, NatWest and Ulster help.

The bank's agreed to do a Q&A for us about the outage and what can be done. Send us questions ASAP on here.

Thanks.

Hi
No one seems to be addressing the knock on effect - by which I mean payments not being made on time into accounts belonging to customers of other banks. So where A is RBS customer who can't pay B then B can't pay C etc.

agrinnall

VT82 wrote: »

By that logic, the IT people over the last 20 years are responsible for not having had the gumption to point out that the legacy systems needed an overhaul or they would eventually fail.

Planting a poison pill - forcing yourself to become indispensable to your employer, by allowing flaws that only you can fix to remain in place, might work most of the time to keep you in the job, but it doesn't mean it's right.

Many of the people who have been made redundant (or in my case just left) over the last few years had spent many years previously pointing out issues with these systems, but they cannot be held responsible for the failure of management to heed those warnings and make the necessary investment. And having lost all those people, if they now do try to have other people with little understanding make changes to the systems to improve robustness there's a pretty good chance of more disasters to come.

Deepfatfriar

dazzammm wrote: »

its no coincidence that the problems have occured since the UK staff who looked after the system (20+ yrs IT experience each) were replaced by offshore graduates (the entire TEAM dont have 10 years IT experience!)

its the same across all banks, retails, insurance companies, utility companies - guys who have been there decades and averted these types of disasters many times over being replaced by offshore people straight out of university with next to no experience and definatley no experience of averting these kind of problems. all in the name of cost cutting / increasing profits.

there are thousands of these guys who have been out of work for years or have had to find new careers who could have solved the problem in half an hour.

Ask yourself - did we have this many IT glitches 5 years ago?

I too have had many years in IT and have experienced the enormity of changing things like this.


The major issue is that the Directors of RBS have allowed a situation to develop where they have the worst of all worlds.


Not only have they allowed the use of obsolete hardware and software to continue but a lot of their software will be unsupported (by manufacturers) and unsupportable by anyone because they have "modified" it.


Worse still some high flying managers will have said what does "old" x do in the corner there, no one knows so he is made redundant. It turns out old x could write and produce patches in the very ancient computer languages the systems are undoubtedly written in.


Thus in trying to convert to new systems it will very difficult without knowing how the old ones work. Also bear in mind during transfer of data BOTH systems will need to work .


Also other companies who electronically interface with RBS/Natwest are far more likely to have 21st Century technology so at some point RBS and Natwest will stop working.


Personally I think what we are now seeing is the beginning of the end of RBS and Natwest.


Can you imagine the political fallout when they go to the government for a multi £billion bail out to rebuild their IT whilst still slushing out bonuses ?


The cost of updating their IT systems will be hundreds of millions of pounds, possibly billions and take years. No competitor in their right mind would buy it certainly not at "market value". Offloading to someone else will not get rid of the problems.

The prospect of the taxpayer getting their money back from this dinosaur to ancient technology I would say is zero.


The money they (or we) have had to pay in fines for bad behaviour (rigging interest rates etc) would have gone some way to rebuilding their IT infrastructure.


In the meantime all bonuses at RBS must be stopped indefinitely and all that money used (if it is possible) to build up an IT fund to get them out of this very deep hole. This will still be a very long project, many years.


The simplest solution is to advise all customers to move their accounts whilst the bank is progressively run down and eventually closed at a well published date in the future.

callum9999

dazzammm wrote: »

its no coincidence that the problems have occured since the UK staff who looked after the system (20+ yrs IT experience each) were replaced by offshore graduates (the entire TEAM dont have 10 years IT experience!)

its the same across all banks, retails, insurance companies, utility companies - guys who have been there decades and averted these types of disasters many times over being replaced by offshore people straight out of university with next to no experience and definatley no experience of averting these kind of problems. all in the name of cost cutting / increasing profits.

there are thousands of these guys who have been out of work for years or have had to find new careers who could have solved the problem in half an hour.

Ask yourself - did we have this many IT glitches 5 years ago?

Correlation does not equal causation. Regardless of it conveniently allowing you to rant about how evil the banks are...

Unless you have specific information on the exact IT failure that caused this issue, and can justify why the old IT staff could fix it in a heartbeat whereas it takes the new staff a few days (how do they fix it at all if what you say is correct?) you're talking nonsense.