NatWest charged me CHAPS for £99 Int transfer

Haengbok

Hi,

Every month I send £99 from my Foreign bank account to my NatWest UK current account.

Every month the fee from NatWest is exactly £1.

Exert from NatWest website: Payments up to £100 or currency equivalent are charged at £1. Payments for over £100 or currency equivalent are charged at £7 each. These charges do not apply where another bank receives sterling from overseas and passes the funds to our customer via the UK clearing system; in that case the receiving banks will levy its own charges.

So every month £98 arrives in my account with code: TFR on my statement.

On the 28th of August I sent the usual £99 from abroad. I received £94 in my account with CHAPS appearing instead of TFR.

I've been charged a £5 fee for this CHAPS service that I didn't request and I don't want/need.

Why have they processed this as CHAPS instead of the normal TFR?

The reason I always send £99 is to only pay the £1 fee. I'm really ticked off.

PeacefulWaters

CHAPS is a UK to UK terminology, so doesn't apply here.

Their tariff suggests a £5 charge for a cheque or £1 for an electronic credit.

My guess is they've either charged you incorrectly or you've sent £101. Call them.


http://personal.natwest.com/content/dam/natwest_com/currentaccounts/downloads/NatWest-Personal-Charges.pdf

jonesMUFCforever

Could it be that somewhere in the transfer system Nat West have changed agent banks since your last payment?

Ballard

As far as I can make out this was a Sterling transfer and although CHAPS is a Sterling based system that doesn't mean that overseas banks cannot use it. Their correspondent can sponsor them into CHAPS in order that they can send funds in that way.

NatWest won't have a correspondent in GBP but it's quite possible that the remitting bank have changed their correspondent and that may have caused the funds to go via CHAPS and thus the fee. Perhaps they remitting bank moved their correspondent from NatWest to one of the other clearers.

My guess is that the issue lies with the remitting bank rather than NatWest.

jonesMUFCforever

That's what I thought in post #3.

Haengbok

Update:

I called Natwest and was on the phone for 25 minutes. They insited that they had not charged me ANY fee. Not even the £1 fee to receive an amount less than £99. They insisted that my foreign bank had only sent £94.

I called my foreign bank up and they insisted that they had sent £99 and that an intermediary bank had taken £5.
I asked them why in the last 30 months that I had never paid a single £ in intermediary bank fees when doing this transaction has it happened this time. The member of staff then said she didn't know and that I would have to go into the bank and ask to see a copy of the wire transfer records.

Natwest insisted that my foreign bank sent only sent £94 and they even verified this came from my specific branch. So all in all I'm confident there is no intermediary bank and that I have been charged CHAPS by mistake by my foreign branch but they can't be arsed to admit the mistake on the phone and are passing the buck onto the bank branch staff that can't speak English (I live in a small town) and I don't speak the local lingo well enough to argue my case about the intricacies of international banking.

Looks like I'm down £5 and I'm also fearful that the next time I send money I could lose another £5.

Ballard

In all honesty, paying £1 to transfer any sum of funds internationally is pretty good going. I don't see how either bank covers their costs on this sort of transaction. Even at £5 it's not bad.

If you look up your foreign bank's website it may show their correspondents somewhere. If the GBP is not NatWest/RBS then that bank may well have taken a fee.

Thrugelmir

Haengbok wrote: »

I called my foreign bank up and they insisted that they had sent £99 and that an intermediary bank had taken £5.
I asked them why in the last 30 months that I had never paid a single £ in intermediary bank fees when doing this transaction has it happened this time. The member of staff then said she didn't know and that I would have to go into the bank and ask to see a copy of the wire transfer records.

Fees do change. There's no guarantee that they won't change. If others are doing as you are, then transaction volumes will have increased. No doubt resulting in a review of service charges. Banks globally are under pressure to increase income.

SurfKing

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Fees do change. There's no guarantee that they won't change. If others are doing as you are, then transaction volumes will have increased. No doubt resulting in a review of service charges. Banks globally are under pressure to increase income.

Fees do change, but customers should be made aware of changes in fees for services they regularly use.

In this case it would appear that even the bank's staff are unaware of any changes, so either one of the banks have made a change and not told anyone, or there's been a mistake.

jonesMUFCforever

SurfKing wrote: »

Fees do change, but customers should be made aware of changes in fees for services they regularly use.

In this case it would appear that even the bank's staff are unaware of any changes, so either one of the banks have made a change and not told anyone, or there's been a mistake.

Nat west (or any other bank) would not be aware of a 3rd party bank ie agent bank charge - they got the money after the charge was deducted - this was passed on to the OP.

Thrugelmir

SurfKing wrote: »

Fees do change, but customers should be made aware of changes in fees for services they regularly use.

How would the bank know? The money is being remitted from abroad. The route could be via any intermediary that they wish to use. The receiving bank in the UK is not involved in the transaction.