I had the most frustrating experience yesterday with NatWest.
Basics of the story; I put my salary in this one month to get the £175 for switching (well, closing an old account down really).
Went to transfer the money to Monzo online. I’ve done it before but it would only let me do £750 without a card reader (which I don’t have).
So. Popped into a branch. Firstly had to wait ages, but eventually the branch manager saw me and took me into an office. I told him I wanted to transfer funds. He looked and said I can do it via the app. I told him I couldn’t. He then said “We use the same system as the app so we can’t transfer 1p more than you can via your app” to which I laughed and asked what the point in a bank branch is. He could do some other type of transfer but that would be for a £23 charge and would arrive Monday.
Nonetheless he said let’s try. Popped my card into a machine and entered PIN. Came up as an error - he clicked around a bit and then said “oh”. Turns out he accidentally said my card was lost. So now it’s useless.
I said right can I get a card reader so I can do it myself. He said there was only one in the bank left. I sort of looked at him as if to say “Well… get me it then” but apparently even if he gave me one then, I would still need to go online and order one to activate the usage of them! Which is a waste so I declined getting one in branch. Not least that my card no longer works.
I was told I had to call telephone banking. He didn’t even offer me the bank’s phone.
When I did call, they asked me the same information that I use to log in to online banking so I don’t really see how any extra secure it is.
The chap was lovely, and he was surprised I was told I couldn’t do it in branch. He said they can transfer up to nearly £1 million. My funds were transferred after a few minutes. Crazily he was probably just doing internet banking like I could do.
Faster payments has a 10/20k limit with natwest, not one million. and the faster payments system its self has a maximum limit of 250k. So the guy on the call was talking about CHAPS which has a £23 fee.
NatWest definitely still have some improvements to make.
You called, so they have to verify its you, its not extra secure, its just the same secure. Barcleys has a nice feature where you initiate a call from in the app and it automatically verifies you, so no need to go through any checks on the phone.
They also have an in app version of the card reader which is very handy.
You’d have thought the branch would have been more knowledgeable, or giving you the information more clearly.
I suppose you could have also removed the cash and deposited it into Monzo at paypoint as well.
I used to work with RBS/Natwest as a business manager, and its been 5 years, but unless they have binned the back office system I could do transfers personally between accounts of up to £250k with my managers sign off. Key in a few details, log the payment as authorised by me and done.
Additionally tellers can send BACS payments using your chip and pin in the branch for several thousand pounds at a time (I forget the limit they can do).
Oh and I could wave the fees on chaps payments if I wanted too as well.
So reading this is incredibly painful as I know with 90% certainty the person didn’t know what they were talking about or were deliberately BSing
My point was that if I’m giving the exact same information to a chap on the phone to transfer £1k then why can I not do the exact same thing myself online. I gave no further information than what I would give my browser.
To answer other points:
I was told that the card reader only works if you order one online too to activate the function. I can’t do much more than what I’m told
You can transfer more than £750 once you have used a card reader
All my bills came out that day; more than £750 so I needed it done that day
No way am I taking £1k in cash and walking to a random shop to deposit it. For a fee.
The guy screwed my chip and PIN up as my card is now reported as lost. I got a text today saying it’ll be 5 working days until I get a new one
An absolute horror show, @coffeemadman, but it’s good you’re now sorted.
5 Likes
phildawson
(Sorry, I will have to escalate this.)
15
I had a similar thing where HSBC cocked up the cass to NatWest.
This is at a time where NatWest app limit was £250 unless you’d already paid them online, and yep they don’t send you a card reader that you need to do that.
Not fun trying to pay the mortgage. Anyway HSBC gave me £150 for the mistake, this is on top of the £150 they paid me for having an Advance account for six days before switching away again. NatWest gave me a good amount too for admitting they had been totally useless.
