Online Banking Gave Me A £9,500 OVERDRAFT!!! (natwest.co.uk)

Member Name: KathrynPenguin

Product:	natwest.co.uk
Date:	04/10/01 (8605 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see op

Disadvantages: see op

Well today its official. I'm unemployed and overdrawn by £9,500. Yes nine THOUSAND five hundred pounds overdrawn, just think of the charges that I'm going to incur because of that! Well there had better not be any as this is really down to the incompetence of NatWest and their "Customer service officers". Now you may see some errors made by me in the following processes these were a direct result of me being a customer who expected a quality service. Had I remembered I was dealing with a bank who employs "customer service officers" I would have just converted all monies owned by myself to used fivers and stuffed them under my mattress.

~~~ Secure Payment ~~~
Mistake number one by myself was in believing that a Bankers Draft offered a secure payment method when I sold a car. Having paid me a substantial deposit, which had duly cleared my buyer arranged to get a bankers draft made out to me for £9,500. He appreciated that this was a large sum to take from a stranger so we made an arrangement wherby he would phone me with the number of the bankers draft after he collected it from the bank. I could then phone the bank and verify that they had indeed issued a draft with that number on. My purchaser called me at 1-30pm on Thursday to tell me that he had collected a bankers draft from Grays branch and gave me the number.

~~~ Customer Service Officer Number 1 ~~~
Armed with the number of the draft (like a cheque number) and the branch information I duly called NatWest. Of course I didn't phone the Grays branch as you cant get a phone number for a branch anymore, I phoned the service centre and spoke to a customer service officer. Originally he said I would have to speak to the branch but he wasn't sure they would give out the information I wanted. He tried to put me through to the branch but no-body was answering so he asked me to call back. At this point I got a bit annoyed, after all what's the
point in calling back, the branch might still not answer! He then spoke to a "manager" to ask about the information I wanted and came back and told me that a branch would not give me that information as it would be in breach of the "data protection act". I asked exactly how confirming that they had issued bankers draft number xxxxxx would breach anyone's privacy and he mentioned that I wouldn't like them telling people that cheques have been drawn on my account. Of course bankers drafts are not drawn on your account but on the bank's actual account, and I wasn't asking which drafts had been drawn but for confirmation that they had issued a particular one. I asked what was the point in trying to take a bankers draft for security and he told me they were "as good as cash" to which I replied, "oh and you never get any forged bank notes!". Basically I may as well have asked this stranger to pay me in used fivers for all the security I got with a bankers draft.

~~~ Bank Employee ~~~
My next sorry experience was with a bank employee. I've just been made redundant and on Friday a large sum of money was paid into my bank account. I'm a smart cookie financially and I didn't want to leave this cash in my current account for a minute longer than I had to as it earns peanuts in interest there. I wanted it in my Egg savings account, instant access but a great interest rate. Its easy to transfer money to an Egg savings account, you can do it with your Switch card, which I did, I tried to make a transfer of around £3000 and it was refused. As I had to pay in a bankers draft (hopefully not a fake) to NatWest I thought I'd ask why I my Switch payment had been refused. The bank employee was very helpful (or so I thought at the time) and spent a good five minutes looking at my account details on his PC whilst shaking his head and saying there is no reason why the transaction should get re
fused. I explained that once the bankers draft I was paying in had cleared I would also want to transfer that larger amount and he told me it would be no problem. I thought that maybe I'd put some details in incorrectly and left it at that.

~~~ Egg Customer Services ~~~
Naturally, having been told there was no reason for the original refusal of my Switch payment I tried again when I got home. It was refused again. As the helpful bank employee had told me there was no reason for the refusal I called Egg Customer Services this time. The nice chappie (they are always nice at Egg) explained to me that there is a transaction limit on Switch cards, if I had tried to spend £3000 in a shop they would have been told to call the card centre for verification as it exceeded the unverified limit. Of course Egg's online system can't make a telephone call to verify the transaction so it ends up as a refusal. He told me I could ask my bank to increase the transaction limit on my switch card, I explained that the bank staff didn't even know about the limit on my Switch card and decided to do a transfer from my bank using my online banking system.

~~~ It All Goes Smoothly ~~~
Finally something went smoothly. I set up my Egg savings account as a beneficiary from my NatWest account using the online banking service. The transaction couldn't be done for the same day as it was past close of banking but I set it up to transfer the money at close of business Monday (yes that did mean I'd lost a few days interest – grrrr).

~~~ Bankers Draft Clears ~~~
On Sunday morning I checked my bank account and was pleased to see my balance was extremely healthy as the £9500 bankers draft was showing as a cleared item. I did briefly think that clearing overnight was a bit fast but I (foolishly) assumed that this was because it was a bankers draft drawn by a NatWest branch. I duly tried to process a transfer of £10,500 to my E
gg savings account (I didn't transfer enough the first time and I didn't want to lose any interest!). The transfer was refused, the message told me it exceeded the transaction limit and gave a telephone number to call and discuss this.

~~~ Online Banking Advisor ~~~
I rang the telephone number given fully expecting to be told to call back during business hours on Monday (its what I get from the NatWest card centre – see my op about that shower). Surprisingly my call was swiftly answered by a helpful young man. He explained that, yes I should be able to transfer £10,500 but during the transition to a new online banking system, transfer limits were set at £5000, but he would have mine changed to £30,000 within 15 minutes. I trusted this chap and went off to the pub for the rest of the day.

~~~ It All Goes Smoothly Again ~~~
It would appear that the online banking chappie I spoke to on Sunday was indeed a man who knew what he was talking about. On Monday I set up a transfer for £10,500 to my Egg savings account, due to be effective at 6pm that evening. That night I duly checked my Egg savings account and all my transfers had been made, yes I was finally earning interest on my money. Tuesday I checked my NatWest account which showed all my transfers had been made and I still had a healthy bank balance.

~~~ Pizza Hut Buffet Lunch ~~~
Some of my regular readers may know I frequent the Pizza Hut Buffet fairly regularly for their buffet lunches. Today I hit the hut and ate and drank for the princely sum of a little over £6. Like the Queen I don't carry cash so I paid with my Switch card, imagine how surprised (and a little embarrassed) I looked when it was refused. As I handed another card over to the waitress I explained to my friend it must be an error as I had a healthy balance yesterday. When I got home I checked my balance online and it was healthy, I put it down to dodgy computers. Later I ordere
d some Bath Ballistics from the Lush website and decided to pay with my Switch card – it was refused again.

~~~ Customer Service Officer Number 2 ~~~
As you can imagine I'm pretty hacked off now. I have a healthy bank balance and yet my payments are being refused left right and centre as if I don't have any money. I called NatWest again, this time I didn't even have to look up the number as this morning I received a load of bumph through the post about their improved telephone system. The woman I spoke to told me my payments were being refused because I was £9,500 overdrawn!

Obviously that figure rang a bell, I mentioned that the bankers draft for that amount had cleared Saturday and I'd transferred the money out on Monday. Yes she said, I can see all that, except the bankers draft hadn't cleared. Just like cheques bankers drafts apparently take 4 days to clear. I pointed out that it showed as cleared online and she pointed out a little sentence that the "balance displayed may include items which may not yet have been cleared". I said this was a bit daft to show my balance with the amount cleared when it wasn't and was told some utter rubbish about how they are doing that for customer convenience. It certainly wasn't looking very convenient for me, imagine what the charges are for an unauthorized overdraft of nearly ten grand? I swiftly complained that if the bankers draft hadn't cleared then NatWest should never have allowed me to transfer the money into my Egg account. I was assured that there was a note on my account saying no action was to be taken regarding the unauthorized overdraft. I've printed off all my online balances and statements from today showing the amount as cleared just in case. It'll be a cold day in hell before NatWest get any charges out of me for this.

~~~ Online Banking ~~~
You may wonder why I've put this under the online banking secti
on, I didn't do it just to get reads because I've already written under the high street bank. I've done all the work myself here, I've set up the transfer agreement, I've made the transfer instructions. I even tried to make the Switch payments online. I've already written extensively about online banking in general and I've talked about the NatWest online banking site there. The point I'm trying to make here is that I want to look after my own banking, I want to do the work myself. It can't be done though, I still have to resort to branch staff (only if I'm forced to go in there to pay in a cheque though) and telephone help line staff. In this respect NatWest online banking is no different to offline banking, the online banking help line is only for technical queries. If all your transactions are going awry you need to call the service centre, the same service centre you would call if you were a high street customer. Also don't believe that what you view on your online banking service is the same as the bank staff see. The bank see me as overdrawn by that huge sum, the online service shows a healthy little balance in my account.

~~~ The Bottom Line ~~~
Well I'm afraid that this sort of treatment from NatWest employees seems to be par for the course. I get the same sort of problems from their card centre regarding a credit card problem I've been having. It would seem that whatever a staff member tells you should be taken with a pinch of salt, no two people seem to give you the same advice. As for my overdraft, perhaps I should charge NatWest £27.50 for each of my failed Switch transactions, that’s what they charge me when a payment doesn't go through. As for online banking, yes it can be more convenient but I believe that because WE now do all the work on our accounts this is what allows the bank to employ less competent staff.

Summary: