To say that I am sick and tired of the attitude of banks,
particularly over their appalling treatment of customers trying to reclaim
wrongly sold PPI, would be a gross understatement.
I speak from experience but I know tens of thousands of
others are probably being subjected to a similar lack of respect. In my case,
the finger is being firmly pointed at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
When they opened a branch in my neck of the woods many years
ago I was one of the first to open an account with them. Compared to my
experiences with Barclays, the RBS were like a breath of fresh air, and they
continued to be until this whole issue of irregularities occurred over the
selling of PPI. Until then, my experiences with RBS had been extremely good. I found
the staff to be friendly, knowledgeable and efficient. I had no complaints. And
then, under the leadership of Fred Goodwin things started to go wrong ... very
wrong. Staff came and went and the levels of service fell. I hardly ever
visited the bank without a member of staff trying to sell me a new 'product'. When
I extended my meagre business overdraft at my manager's suggestion to something
more substantial I was informed that PPI was a compulsory part of the
agreement. I didn't argue; after all I trusted and got on exceptionally well
with the business advisor assigned to my account. Little did I know then that when I later needed to claim on the payment
protection insurance, I was promptly told by RBS that as a self-employed person
I did not qualify. Up until then, with the bank never being in any doubt about
my self-employed status, they had continued taking hundreds of pounds from me in
premium payments over a period of several years.
When the miss-selling of PPI made the headlines I realised
that I was entitled to a refund, now amounting to several thousands of pounds.
At the start of this year I instigated a claim and by the start of May I
received an offer as a 'goodwill gesture'. I completed the documentation
accepting the offer and posted the form back to RBS same day. Even though I was
angered by their reference to a legitimate refund of money I was entitled to get
back being referred to as a 'goodwill gesture' I was, at that time, prepared to
ignore it. When the refund hadn't arrived a month or so later I phoned the RBS helpline
and was told very quickly by some disinterested individual in the Manchester call
centre that my acceptance documents had been lost in the post. There was not
even a hint of 'may have' been lost in the post but a definitive pronouncement
that appeared to be uttered as a well-rehearsed line he had used a thousand
times before to other hapless victims.
The saga continued. Having been told by RBS that a
replacement form would be sent in 10-days this failed to arrive; nor did the
next one they promised to send when I phoned the call centre again. I followed
this with a recorded delivery letter to the person that had signed the original
offer but got no response. I telephoned again and was told they had only
received my letter the day before even though having checked I knew it had been
signed for more than a week earlier. Further attempts to get any sense out of
the call centre proved fruitless and after being confronted by own extremely
rude individual whose grasp of English was embarrassing, I demanded to speak to
a manager. After this character's English suddenly improved I was informed they
do not have bosses or anyone else in authority for that matter to speak to at
the PPI call centre! Eventually , despite twice being told I would receive an
improved offer to account for the poor treatment I have received, a copy of the
original offer arrived, that I have now rejected.
Suitably unimpressed, I contacted the Financial Ombudsman
Service who offered to write a letter of complaint on my behalf. This was kind
of them but in truth the Ombudsman service is a lame duck and has no clout
whatsoever over the way these mindless bankers are behaving. But, they did give
me a name - someone called Mark Bayliss
who is based at the RBS PPI Customer
Concerns Team (sic), PO Box 886, 4th Floor, Trinity Quay 1, Bristol BS99 5LJ.
I wrote to him, sent the letter recorded delivery on 27 July that was signed
for three days later, and guess what ... I have heard nothing.
This exercise merely goes to prove how little regard the
banks have for their customers (or, in my case, former customer). In spite of
all of the adverse publicity that has surrounded the various concerns over
banking practices, these establishments are still getting away with things and
are behaving with absolute contempt towards anyone that challenges them.
Isn't it high time that somebody in authority got to grips
with this entire disgraceful situation to force the banks to act fairly and
with due consideration towards claimants that need the money that has wrongly been
taken from them. This is the customers' money ... not the banks. By withholding
or delaying refunds the banks are causing considerable hardships. They have a
moral, if not legal responsibility to make refunds promptly and fairly and
wronged customers should not have to wait many months and be subjected to
disgraceful treatment.
No comments:
Post a Comment