Both my parents banked with NatWest all of their working lives and my mother's main day to day account was held with them. Just after she had paid the proceeds of her house sale into it and just before she was able to buy an annuity the bank froze the account after a junior bank clerk decided that she was not mentally competent.
This caused many severe problems and financial loss as it took 6 months to resolve. Despite many requests from my mother and me the interest rate for this period was fixed at 0.1%. The bank also threatened to stop paying care home fees and made charges for unpaid cheques as the money was held in a deposit account. My brother and I were not allowed to access the account to transfer money into the current account so there was nothing that we could do to prevent this. After many complaints and the involvement of a newspaper the bank did finally repay the charges but they are still refusing to pay a fair rate of interest for the period that the account was frozen.
The whole episode is now the subject of a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/complaints.htm and we will never hold accounts with NatWest or their parent company RBS again.
This article http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/feb/27/natwest-will-internet-withdrawal has an example of NatWest freezing an account due to their own mistake. It would be interesting to know whether they are paying a competitive interest on the money that they have retained while this is resolved.
ReplyDelete