nat west mid sold package account

pauline1966

My husband - when still single in 1996 and after having a nightmare with First Direct with bank charges- opened a Current Plus Account with the Natwest. when we got married in 1997 we visited the local Natwest branch to change this to a joint account. We were asked if we wanted to have an overdraft facility and we answered yes, we were then offered in the assistants opinion the best account for us which we agreed to and left. I honestly have no recollection of being told of charges which applied to this account at the time of accepting it so am unsure of when the charges started - I just know that every couple of years, when looking at our statements in the hope of reducing our outgoings, that I would voice to my husband how bad it is that we were being charged for having a bank account. He would just reply that it was a service charge. It was only this week after seeing Martin's programme on TV that we have become aware of "package bank account mis-selling" I believe we were mis-sold as we were not offered any alternative accounts - we were just told about this account and no other. We are unsure if it was given the title of Advantage Gold at the time of agreeing to the account and we have had information letters with updates about the account every now and then - the last one was April last year about it being upgraded again to what is now called a select Platinum Account with an increase in cost per month - my husband just files these as we thought that all bank accounts had monthly service charges - I know this is not very clever but it never occurred to either of us that we had a choice of paying a fee or not. Does anyone think we have a chance of claiming ? sorry about long winded question and thanks in advance for replies

Nasqueron

You can complain and might get lucky on an auto-payout but your reasons for complaint are hearsay and you won't be able to prove them (indeed, NatWest will probably be able to produce documentation and copies of product information they sent you covering the charges).

It may be that the charged account offered cheaper (or even free) OD than a free account, or had a bigger OD, or even that they considered you to be a financial risk so it would have been the paid for account or no OD - hard to say so long after.

Worth bunging in a complaint and assume it will be rejected and a win would be a bonus