Nat West retired staff benefits

soosieg

Hi can anyone help? I took redundancy from Nat West in 1997 after 20+ years service. As part of the terms I was given the option to take my pension at age 50 which I did. I was also guaranteed that my mortgage would be taken over and I would be continue to be treated as staff. I received a letter which stated that as I was no longer an employee of said bank I would no longer be entitled to a free advantage gold account and would be charge £15 each month for this service. My question is can they do this? Do I have any comeback on them or do I just have to lie down and take whatever they wish to do to me?!!

cattie

What has the card to do with your mortgage? If nothing then of course they can do what they wish if they never promised you free banking for life when you decided to take redundancy.

Caz3121

Also it might be worth looking at the taxes board as there was a recent post from someone with a bank staff mortgage who was no longer an employee - still was entitled to the staff rate however their tax code had not been adjusted to account for the taxable benefit and they ended up with a tax bill

soosieg

I was told that I would incur no charges as I was ex staff and now a Nat West pensioner. The advantage gold account has nothing to do with the mortgage it was just all part of the redundancy package. My concern was that after 15 years of being entitled to these benefits they have now decided that I am not entitled and wish to charge me. Some people may say be thankful you got 15 years of their services without charges but I think its unfair and wondered why/how they can just suddenly decide to start charging.:mad:

cattie

soosieg wrote: »

but I think its unfair and wondered why/how they can just suddenly decide to start charging.:mad:

Perhaps in the same way that Ebay just suddenly decided that they would start charging sellers 10%+vat in commission on buyers post & packaging charges.

In todays world, big business means trying to squeeze every penny you can conceivably manage to get out of customers, whether fair or not alas.

SlimmingSusan

Lol.makes me laugh, was a Natwest Advantage Premier customer for many years. This was due to my joint account with my husband who was a high earner.

Natwest are so fake. We even had a 'bank manager' come to our home one day. He was just looking at our assets. We divorced later.then natwest still had me as a premier customer for years, even though I was on benefits,

They do not seem to do family counseling

fira

soosieg

Apologies for this being a bit long winded but stick with it as it might help.

I was in the same position as you albeit being made redundant in 2001 and being able to take my deferred pension two years later when 50yo.

They shut our complete department down but said our jobs were safe if we were prepared to move 400 miles or so to another unit doing the same type of work we were. I was tired and wanted to leave.

I was told that my existing packaged bank account monthly fee would increase from the staff rate of £4 to the customer rate of £12 until I became a bank pensioner and that’s exactly what happened. When I turned 50 and my pension kicked in I called YourBank (their own staff ‘offers’ department), explained I was now a bank pensioner and they immediately dropped the fee down to £4 a month.

Can I suggest you call YourBank and discuss it with them? They say in the booklet I have here ‘For transactions / service queries and complaints relating to existing Nat West accounts please call: NWB Action line 08457 888 444’

Lastly, this is the paragraph that seems to sometimes be interpreted differently by some staff at YourBank ‘Your Bank accounts are exclusive to RBS Group employees and offers you exclusive rates and benefits on a wide range of financial products. To quality for a Your Bank current account, you must be aged 18 or over and a permanent member of staff or fixed term contractor, based in mainland UK or an eligible pensioner.’

Please note the words ‘eligible pensioner’. Nobody has yet been able to define to me that eligibility. In my case one lad told me I would never get back to paying reduced fee as I had been made redundant whereas another said all RBS pensioners pay the reduced fee and as soon as the pension was awarded I’d be eligible.

I need to say though that I have never had a free packaged account which you seem to have had but I guess much of the above is still relevant.

Bill