ShatWest Worse Business Banking In The World

[Ivor1]

Just want to warn anyone if thinking about opening a business account avoid Natwest, and avoid their Islington Branch, as their Business Manager is a total muppet. I thought opening a business account with my own bank would be easy how wrong was I. The time line of the Shatwest screw up is as follows,

1. May apply for bank account at Natwest Islington Branch.

2. June found out the Business Manager had not sent my application form in he has just sat on it for 4 weeks, he promises to do submit it.

3. July still no news, ring up Business Manager says 'he is awaiting checks at company house to come back'

4. Mid August after lots of calls, chasing I get account number.

5. September check my statements and find £130 of fecking charges, even though Im supposed to have 18 months free banking, I get told to talk to my Business Manager, said business manager never answers his phone, never returns calls, I have esculated it to the Branch manager and nothing.

6. Made a complant today said I wanted a response in 24hrs, they said it would be 10 days !

In the end Ive given up and will open an account with Abbey, my colleague managed to get his Business Bank account set up in an hour with HSBC.

Avoid Natwest at all costs, in all my life I have never dealt with such poor service and that includes utility companies, estate agents and solicitors.

Natwest suck big, big, big time

[Ardesco]

I rmember my first (and only) Natwest account. I was 19 and went 1p over my overdraft limit. For my first ever banking offence they bounced the cheque, cancelled my overdraft, called back my cheque book and bank card, charged me £25 for the pleasure and then told me that they were going to charge me a £25 over limit fee every day that my account was overdrawn.


After a couple of hours discussion with the bank manager they aggreed to just freeze my account and not charge me an extra £25 a day, the rest stood however.

All in all I will NEVER trust the useless to**ers ever again and refuse to bank with. The amusing thing is that 7 of my freinds who used to bank with Natwest also had similar experiances, the most amusing one being one of my freinds who never had less than £4000 in his account. They refused to let him take £1000 out to buy a car and wouldn't let him have his money until he blew up and told the to shut the account there and then and give him all of his money right away.

To add insult to injury they then sent out a customer service questionnaire to find out why he had closed his account....

[geekboy]

Whilst I don't doubt the experiences you've had mine where totally different. I had a new account setup within a week, being a new customer I'm not sure if this level of service will continue but I'm happy in my dealings with them so far.

[Ivor1]

Whilst I don't doubt the experiences you've had mine where totally different. I had a new account setup within a week, being a new customer I'm not sure if this level of service will continue but I'm happy in my dealings with them so far.

Think mine might have a lot to do with the nob in the Islington Branch who is Business Manager, thick as two short planks, a lier, with a crap 'too' trendy hair cut. He must be 20 max a fecking idot Im so god dame angry. It delayed me changing from brolly to my ltd.
I mean what kind of idot can't enter details from an application form into a PC, this is the guy they believe will help you with your business issues.

[dork]

I also had bad experiences with them.

I had a business account with several years ago.. they charged a fortune and f***ed everything up. This was at the same time that they were getting rid of branch managers, which meant that nothing got done and I couldn't contact anyone who could deal with the problems.

These f*** ups at their end meant I was said to have defaulted on payments ( I had set up arrangements but the details were "lost"). The default went on my credit history and gave me no end of problems for a few years...

My advice: NEVER EVER, EVER, EVER use NatWest .

[oraclesmith]

Well...... I've been a Natwest customer all my adult life. I also have a business bank account with them and a business reserve account. They've been OK with both personal and business banking as far I can see.

The only hiccups were that when I met with them to agree the business account, the person who was supposed to be meeting me wasn't able to, so they had a stand-in who wasn't really clued up on business accounts. She must have thought I was trying to defraud them or something ! It was easily sorted though. Also, they didn't clock that I was a limited company and took tax off the interest on the deposit account. One phone call and it was sorted. I'm pretty happy with them. At least if things do go wrong there is only a limited number of people to talk to to get it put right.

My wife is with Barclays and they're much worse. In our experience.

[TheMonkey]

List of organisations to avoid that I've had experience with in the last 10 years (which I've had REALLY bad experiences with *goes through wallet*):

- Natwest Personal Banking
- Natwest Business Banking
- Natwest Personal Loans
- MNBA Europe (under the guise of Virgin Money)
- Tescos Personal Finance.
- Abbey.
- Barclays anything.

Good guys:

- Natwest credit card (probably because they are RBS run directly).
- Capital One (honest, helpful people).
- HSBC (honest, reliable, affordable).

Sorry - HSBC plug added:-

- FREE for life business banking and chargecard with £1000 limit set up in 24 hours including recieving ALL paperwork.
- Decent security protocols such as keyfob sequencer.
- NO problems at all since I moved everything to them back in 2004.
- FREE £800 overdraft on personal account.
- Never have to hang around in a branch for more than 20 minutes.
- Never had the word NO uttered to me ever.
- Sent me a nice bottle of champaign and congratulations card (circa 30 quids worth) after I mentioned the birth of my youngest daughter to one of the staff members.

[Mailman]

- Natwest Personal Banking
- Natwest Business Banking
- Natwest Personal Loans
- Tescos Personal Finance.

These are also directly run by RBS.

Mailman

[Ardesco]

Good guys:

- Capital One (honest, helpful people).

I had no end of problems with these monkies!! First of all they started charging me intrest a month early on my balance transfer and I had to fax them a copy of my credit card statement stating that I had no interest to pay before they would agree to pay me the interest back. To add insult to injury they then sent me a letter saying they had refunded me account fees once but they would not do it again if I was in the wrong (when I was blatantly in the right).

Secondly the wonderful Indian call centre where they promised me the world and delivered me absolutely nothing. Through my own fault I forgot my PIN number and got it locked out and after 3 months they had still not reactivated my PIN number or sent out a new one despite me calling them about once a week and being told there was nothing wrong at their end and that my PIN numberwas active and every other excuse under the sun.

I would have to say that they turned out to be one of the most incompetant companies I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.

The only positive was the good laugh the Indian call centre used to give me occasionally with the names thay gave me. I had one woman insist that her name was siobhan, the only problem was she was pronouncing it the way it was spelt (I know you're Indian, you know your indian, just give me your real name, I know it's Gupta or Rama, or some such dammit....)

[TheMonkey]

These are also directly run by RBS.

Mailman

Indeed.

Amazingly I moved a personal loan from Natwest to Tesco as the rate was better!?