Exactly! But as long as customers aren't persistent enough in their complaints about it nothing will be done.

Ok you can forget about interest i'm just talking about the charges. No-one has guessed high enough yet btw!

Heres a (hypothetical) question for you to think about - I think some of you may be shocked! I go into the bank and find I'm overlimit. The teller tells me a company tried to take a D/D last week for the sum of £1.99. However there was only £1.98 available in the account at the time. This left me a whole ONE PENCE SHORT! (I have a standard "interest paying current account" I don't usually pay fees on & other than the attempted D/D there are no other transactions on my account this week) My question to you is this- In the WORST CASE SCENARIO how much will I have incurred in charges over the last week for being just ONE PENCE SHORT?? Answers on a postcard below please (i'll post the answer later once someone gets it right) ******* Edit - Answer is £132.00 check further down for an explanation of this

re the verbal authorisation debate: i checked up. Yes obviously its possible for a teller to do this but it goes against standard RBS policy and even the way computers software is laid out. You need to lie to the system to get it to work. If we follow the correct procedures we will first be prompted as to how we identified the customer. Truth is however almost all tellers I've ever met just click "customer at counter - customer known" regardless of whether customer is known/not, is phoning or has sent a letter into the branch. When we try and cancel a DD using this option a slip is printed for the cust to sign . A message on screen says something along the lines of "has the customer signed to confirm cancellation of the DD?" but even if the customer is not there to sign most tellers will just hit "yes" regardless. If we selected as ID "telephone call" and then "callers voice recognised" (or "not recognised") then go and try to cancel a direct debit the system says something along the lines of "sorry this option is not available please choose another means of identification" So unless we lie to the system it won't let us cancel DDs or SOs on verbal authorisation alone. Don't get me wrong though - this is presently done in lots of branches throughout the UK without a moments thought by the teller. I know personally if we are very busy in the bank then because of constant management pressure to reduce queues and meet sales targets i often write customer requests (eg new card orders, cheque books requests etc) down and do them later when I've more time and we're less busy. Again not strictly by the book but almost everyone does it. Some people will just try and remember and this is how problems occur and DDs are not cancelled when they should be. Hope this makes sense. good luck with the letter btw.

I'd allow them some more time (not too much). Statements are only produced once a week I believe so it may take a few days longer for her to get your details back. What she says is true that if its been closed over a certain time ago (more than a year i think) then it won't appear anywhere on system. Give it at least til this time next week I'd say. Good luck

All I know is that army or police id can be taken to open an account but we are not legally allowed to photocopy it. We need some address verification too (bank statement, utility bill, driving licence, voters roll search etc etc (full list is about two pages long!) If it's not possible to provide anything like this then I suppose we could potentially have a letter from the army but this would need authorised specially by a head office dept before we opened an account. I once heard a story that a new member of Sir Fred Goodwin's (chief exec of RBS) household staff did not have relevant id (she was foreign) and they had to phone Sir Freds office and politely ask for a personal reference before they were allowed to open an account! If the branch you are talking about regularly opens army accounts they may have different systems in place however.

well done. Don't give up til you receive every single penny back!

Yeah ask them to copy them as you want them back. How many statement pages are you talking about? It may take them a while to copy them all!! Showing you are willing to help speed up the process will only help your cause as well.

I take it you're a business customer with such high charges?? If theres anything bank wise that would help just ask as I work in an RBS branch and get on well with our business manager. Not sure how the legalities of you living in Scotland and taking a Scottish company at an English address to an English court would work out but good luck in any case. Could loss of a days earnings and travel/accomodation expenses for attending court be added to your claim? (I'm not sure about the legalities of this just an idea)

Sounds quite complicated. I'm certain you could get all the "penalty charges" back through templates on this site and county court etc etc If there is bank error involved (ie the foreign payments being sent to the wrong account and then back and you losing out on exchange rates) then I suppose this could be taken to court as well (provided you could show that it is more than likely bank error was involved) I would say try the ombudsman first for the bank errors that caused you expense and then go through litigation to reclaim "penalty charges" if necessary. (You are still allowed to go to court regardless of the Ombudsmans decision) All the best.

Phone up and ask who would have authority to refund £400 worth of overpaid interest. Ask to be put through to them (don't hang up until you are put through) and explain the situation to this manager type. Tell them you feel you are being more than reasonable and that the figures speak for themselves. It is plain and obvious that if 18.9% interest applied over 6 years comes to £6,780 then it obvious that 1% interest you have overpaid is £6,780 divided by 18.9 = around £400. They will offer a far smaller amount than £400. Don't worry though. Tell them that nothing less than a full refund of the £400 will do and as this is the amount they have overcharged you would not expect anything less. Whatever they offer you ask if that is their final offer (hey that sounds a bit like 'millionaire ) When they tell you their final offer: Be firm but polite and say if that is all they are prepared to refund then you are left with no option but to go through the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) or even take court action to recover this interest the bank has overcharged you by. Then ask this credit-card manager type for the the contact details of the Ombudsman so you can write to them about the issue. Also ask for confirmation of their own name, position and also confirmation that this is a final offer. (assuming they know their stuff they will also know that the bank gets charged somewhere between £300-£500 (seen different figures quoted by different people) each time the FOS gets involved in a dispute regardless of whether the customer is right or not. It's also totally risk free to the consumer. Any decisions the FOS makes the bank has to abide by and it doesn't limit you from taking further action.) If the bank still won't budge (hopefully they will have by now) then by all means write to the ombudsman at the address provided. The bank has £300-£900 to lose regardless of the outcome. You have nothing to lose and £400 to gain. Good luck.

Brilliant mate top stuff!

Ask for a copy of your letter you sent them in the 1st place. It will either be stored (a) electronically on "Customer Events System" and they can print out a copy for you there and then. or (b) as a hard copy in branch. They can find the letter filed away with the days work for whenever the standing order was set up (if you don't know what date it is ask for a print out of your SO it's listed as the "date of authority") Assuming the letter proves you are right and the bank set the SO up wrong then speak to the manager or phone customer relations insisting on a refund due to bank error. (see sticky on RBS contact details). (Remember the manager is maxed at £50 refunds though) If they are unable to produce a letter with your signature on it then write to or phone customer relations as a SO has been debited to your account without any apparent permision. Even if you DID set the SO up wrong in any case going through the methods on this site will work also. Good luck

Yeah what you're saying is basically right. Working out backdated interest is very complicated i don't know of anyone who has shown me how to do it accurately though. Your figure of £400 odds sounds more like it than their offer of £67. According to the terms and conditions it's up to the customer to phone credit card centre, tell them they've now got a royalties account and get put on the new rate. (It never happens automatically) Keep trying but as this is interest not charges i believe your best avenue of success would be to keep being persistent with credit card centre. 1% interest overcharged on the outstanding balance per year = closer to £400 & definitely not £67.

I work in a RBS branch and we don't record phone calls in/out of the branch at present. But I have a mate who works in BOS corporate. All their phone calls are recorded and managers can also listen in on their conversations to "check up" on staff from time to time. Once when a customer disputed authorising something they just dug out the recording and played it back to him. Bottom line is some depts/banks record phone calls, some don't.

I've yet to see a single (court threat) claim in my branch as yet. A few weeks ago we were told what to do if we received letters from custs about them "taking court action to recover illegal penalty charges" - ie we were to forward the letter to the relevant department - pronto! They did seem quite concerned about it right enough. My branch is fairly small and doesn't get a lot of charges to be honest but it may be different in a big city branch. All I know is that I've never heard of a single bank customer (on this site or elsewhere) who's gone all the way and not won. Go for it you've absolutely nothing 2 lose and everything to gain!

In RBS it depends on what statements you mean. Say you're £100 overdrawn: Proper statements (ie those sent out in the post) say £100.00 DR (DR = overdrawn by the way) If you asked for a mini-statement at the in branch it says £100.00 - (ie £100 followed by a minus symbol)

Sounds like a good idea but soz don't know a lot

All the best Stephen. Good luck

nice

Companies are only obliged to keep information for certain lengths of time. Thus there are customer files in my banks storage marked with "destroy November 2006", "destroy January 2011" etc etc. I am not sure how statements work but certainly (with RBS anyway) they do not all appear to be on computer. We can only see back a year I'm not sure how far back the main computers / microfiches go.

yes well i'll keep u updated on what we are told

Be firm, persistent but not rude. I agree with other posters that if you are downright rude to ordinary staff then we are far less likely to want to help you out. Keep being persistent and do all it takes to get your charges back and you WILL get them all back (eventually) even if you have to raise a court action to do so. Most bank staff are just fed what the banks want them to hear - therefore even though 90-95% of staff think charges are outrageous and unjustified they are not aware that they are illegal.

Until I found this site, no I wouldn't have thought anything of it. Nowadays I would suspect that they were probably wanting their charges back (and maybe wish them good luck!). Since DPA came in I've only seen 1 DPA request (and no-one had a clue what to do!)

Its only policy to send a letter for the 1st instance. Any other charges you won't get any notice of (apart from paid referal fees and account maintenance fees which are detailed on your statement before they are deducted) See my thread in "a word from banks" about how the bank charges are worked out / applied.