…epic proportions.

We opened 3 children’s current accounts and 3 savers with them, as they had a branch in Dunblane. Kids used it after school to pay in paper round money etc. Often mrs_oab would do it, pop in, cash + kids bank card to cashier. Job jobbed.

RBS closes Dunblane branch.

RBS moves Stirling branch to swanky new expensive pad that took over a coffee shop and mini supermarket its so big.

This week mrs_oab pops in to pay in kids paperound money and tips.

“Sorry, we don’t have a cashier, just a machine.

No you can’t use it, you need the card pin number and clearly you’re not the account holder.”

Apparently we need to book a 20 minutes slot for each of the 3 boys pay in, at a weeks notice.

So today we move to HSBC as we can use Post Office, they have cashier, and you can use the machine to pay in with no pin, just the card needed.

Back to RBS – where we are shown the cashier (!) hidden at the back for business customers only, who closes all 6 accounts in under 10 mins, no ID or pin etc needed and walk out with cash from the boys current account and savings from birth (a fair few quid..).

Is it me?

Nope, my missus still has an old account with them that is basically dormant, and doing ANYTHING is a complete ball ache. Bag of badly run shite.

When you’re in the business of running down the worlds largest Bank (for a few moments pre-crash) into a small one, you don’t need to worry yourself about looking after your customers too much.

RBS in Scotland is slightly different to RBS in the rest of the UK, when I worked for them they really weren’t interested in consumer customers outside of Scotland, that’s what Natwest was for.

That said, I’ve always thought Banks are a bit like Headsets, no one really cares about their headset unless it doesn’t work, so it’s only the once in a blue moon you actually try to visit one, you realise they’ve changed a lot, or gone all together.

Since the crash all Banks, not just RBS / Natwest have been closing branches as quickly as they can. Apart from the OP they’re rarely used by anyone other than retired boomers who like to spend an hour chatting to the cashier for something to do, most people can go years and years between visits. The ones that are left are really high pressure sales offices where you can’t even get a coffee out of them while you agree to pay them a lot of money every month for a very long time.

Very few people use cash these days to any great amount, cheques are becoming a thing of the past and even if some git does send you a cheque you can scan them with an app these days and they clear in 24 hours.

We were looking for a commercial mortgage, a broker recommended Natwest.

It was a very strange situation, I was still keeping my salaried job, the Mrs would be running the business which would be connected to our new home, hence needing a commercial mortgage. My salary would cover the mortgage even if the business made nothing. We had been over paying on our current similar mortgage for the last 2 years.

The Natwest “customer relationship manager” got in touch, he had all the numbers and paperwork and said it would  be absolutely no problem.

3 weeks into the process, I was told I had to have a telephone interview with the “compliance manager”. He assured me it would be a tickbox exercise. So a few days later spent an hour on the phone with a lady who was obviously reading off a script.

3 days later she then phoned me back to tell me that they could not provide the mortgage as the business didn’t produce enough profit to pay the mortgage. No shit Sherlock! No one had ever expected it to. I told her that her bank had just wasted a great deal of my time and the stupidity of their decision.

A few hours later the relationship manager phoned me and I lost it with him. Told him what a shower they all were at RBS and how due to their greed and corruption, genuine and honest people were suffering.

Went to another broker and got a mortgage sorted from a small Building Society which was a much better deal than the Natwest one anyway. So glad they didn’t get my business in the end. The original broker was a lying shitbag as well.

I bewail the passing (though it’s still here) my old RBS branch..    where each of the staff you’d know my sight, name, and would be able to sort stuff out there and then. Now there are auto machines inside, a lot of running up and down a queue trying to ‘help’ — *just open another till and that would help* – oh, there are now only two ‘stations’ so can’t do that..

As above, I used to have to go in quite a lot to get the right amount of separate notes for my mum, RBS was just such a palaver getting anything like that..     Though not sure any other bank/BS will be much better these days.

Better get used to it.

Auto tiller machines are the future, staff are too expensive.

I used to bank with RBS – it was compulsory for staff to be paid into an rbs account when I worked there at the turn of the millennium.  Anyway a handful of years ago I was starting to look to buy my first house and RBS called me up to make an appointment to see if they could sell me some products. I explained I was interested in a mortgages to which told, yes sir – we have the best mortgages –  booked an appointment, took the afternoon off work and went in…

Me “Hi, looking to buy a house & want you to talk to me about mortgages please”

Sales chap  – “Would sir like a credit card?”

me – “No, got one already. I want to find out about your mortgages”

Sales chap  – “Oh I see you have a small balance on your CC, would you like a loan to consolidate it? ”

Me – “No, it’s only a couple of hundred pounds & as you can see I pay off in full each month”

Sales chap  – “Do you drive? How old is your car – we could offer a great loan for a new car…”

Me – “No, I have a car. As you know I came here to talk to you about mortgages”

*after much detail taking, form filling, talking through income and outgoings*

Sales chap “Our best mortgage rate today is currently 5.6%, would that be of interest..?”

Me “Your competitors are all in 3.x% range – surely you have a competing product?”

Sales chap “No, we’re not really pushing mortgages just now – how would you like a loan for….”

Needless to say I went elsewhere.

Matt_OAB,

i see its not ideal from your wife’s perspective… but have you considered that perhaps the issue is the children’s employer who is still using the 20th century practice of paying people in cash? Presumably the kids could have paid it in themselves at the machine (using the pin?).  Or you could act as the banker and take the cash and transfer the money into their account?  (Either using the cash or Mrs oab could pay it into her own account).

whilst it would be easy to complain that we own RBS so it should offer some sort of public function – actually we want it to be as profitable as possible so we can get as much of our investment back and that means getting rid of really inefficient functions like tellers.

Under Fred Goodwin RBS and Nat West got rid of anyone who actually knew about banking and replaced them with sales people.

I’m thinking it was a mistake to prop the banks up with public money.

No one should be too big to fail..

I think the problem is that banks are and they knew it, so during the 90s and 00s they lent, lent, lent with no thought for providing a service just sell, sell, sell. The people at the top didn’t care because they would either not be there when it went bang or would get a parachute payment on resignation so they could retire in the sun. Keep the shareholders happy and all that.

poly – can I ask you

– what the fundamental purpose of a retail bank is?

– when the kids are meant to access these machines, seeing as now they have to get a train into Stirling after school to access them or miss the usual cycle/hill walk/canoe/etc on Saturday morning?

– I agree on the pay being in cash, but frankly all the tips from hotel work are cash, and paper shop shuffles rounds and kids pretty regularly, so making pay easier cash in hand

– no I won’t be my kids bank. Half the reason for all this is my kids learning financial literacy and self money management. In HSBC the lady was brilliant in getting them all to download and set up the app, taking about security and how to do all the transfers etc.

– if HSBC can manage a cashier, use of post office, pay into machine without PIN and a generally helpful attitude, why can’t RBS?

As some have said above, RBS seems to be spending daft money on new bank and only being interested in insurance or loans. If they were serious about being profitable and stable (so shares rise, so we can get out as a governmental loan), then why the huge, huge new branch and why turn away £4k of savings and one of my boys who now earns £1k a month and about to have student loans, car insurance etc….? So short sighted and geared towards not having a retail base.

Fred Goodwin

💩🤡