Opening Nat West account

chunkymunky_3

well ive gotta jump in and say one thing!

Ive been a natwest customer for ten years and currently have a student account with them (im at uni) and the only question is WHY ON EARTH AM I STILL WITH THEM? ive had none stop problems with them ever since changing to a student account, it seems to me that when i was working and had a "real" account i was seen as a worthwhile customer and was treat as such. now i have a student account, the branch and customer services dont wanna know and treat me as a pety annoyance!
I finish my studies in 4 weeks and start a well paid job.....my wages wont be going to natwest!

P.S. this is not an isolated incident, of the 20 people i study with half are with natwest and dont have a good thing to say about em

Katkat_2

My situation sounds so similar to yours, chunkymunky! I've had a natwest current account for 13 years, worked in a full-time job and (although there were some problems with them making idiotic mistakes on my account/talking about my account in front of the whole branch) everything went smoothly, on the whole. Then, when I left work and started university, they made mistake after mistake...and despite being 25 years old with my head screwed on (at least partially), any time I called them I was treated as if I was a moron. They continued to charge me interest, which when I was waiting for my loan to come through, put me over my overdraft limit, so they charged me for that (also shouldn't have happened on my student account)...they cost me about £300 in total and I'm still waiting to get it back. Just waiting to see if the bank charge reclaiming goes ahead...if not, I'll be on their backs about the money that they really can't argue about having wrongly taken from me in charges! The railcard never materialised, either... And yet, I'm still with them because I'm just so nervous about attempting to move my overdraft to another bank. I need to get on with it!

chunkymunky_3

hmmm are you sure youre not me? we have the same problems!

the biggest problem with natwest is that there answer to every problem is "heres a credit card" or "heres an increase to your overdraft" then when you go to them and say my bursary/student loan is going in one day late its "tough heres a £30 fee" then that fee puts you over your limit the following month so its heres another fee and so on and so on and so on!

I went to my student branch and asked can i increase my overdraft by £20 and got "no coz youve gone over your current limit" it was like der if i wasnt going over my limit i wouldn't want to increase it. the reply i got was stop using ur overdraft and you can have an increase. at that point i stopped talking to the wall and left

dibs1977

Hello Nat west staffmember, still my daughter hasn't received her student pack or the ATM card.
It just seems to me to be a waste of time that she goes there to see if it is ready which she has been doing for the past couple of weeks and they keep saying come back on Monday.
Why don't they just phone her when it comes??
I hope your bank is taking notice of the numerous complaints on this website, at least if they know where they are going wrong then they can rectify some of the mistakes made.

ka7e

She's not the only one!
Nat West have said they will send her stuff to her Halls address, but that was 4 weeks ago. She is on work placement until Christmas so can't get to the bank during the day. We've had to subsidise her as she is afraid she will be charged if she goes overdrawn on her Solo-based current a/c.
What's really galling is she lives in the same postcode as NatWest HQ in London. Perhaps she should camp out on their doorstep in protest!

dibs1977

Hi ka7e, it's getting beyond a joke.
Where are you natwest staffmember? I guess you are speechless too!
xxx

ka7e

DD had some time off today and visited her local branch to get them to "close" her student account and take back her credit card. She figured a new bank would do a credit check and refuse her for already having a student a/c and cc. She refused to budge until there was some resolution.
After about half an hour and several phone calls, she was informed that a new account had never been set up but that they had changed her current a/c to a student one. This was something she had expressly asked them not to do and they have not sent her any notification of the transfer. She still only has a Solo debit card, not a Maestro one. Last month they apparently organised her a £150 overdraft without noticing that there was a £1250 one already in place!
They tried to convince her that this had happened following her first enquiry, but I suspect there was some behind-the-scenes action going on to save face.

Helix

They only upgrade the card to Maestro if you request it. Otherwise they will keep sending Solo cards. I found this out when I upgraded my account my card expired and they replaced it with another Solo. I went into the branch they tapped a few things into the computer and ordered a Maestro card for me.

The way to tell if the existing account was upgraded is to look at the top of the statements. It should say Student/Graduate Service at the top.