RBS sticks it to customers once again as IT woes continue

Re: Regulator??@YAAC

Why does the regulator have to be involved - that's what the market is for

Generally I agree with your sentiments.

However, banking is a regulated activity. Banks, whether they like it or not are ALL now technology companies that take deposits/make trades/etc: They are not the branch network; they are not the physical vault.

Having the FCA, PRA, and BoE regulate the behavioural side of the industry will only get you so far. Eventually someone needs to look at regulating what the banks do, and what they do is technology. While you'll only find a handful of CEOs expressing that view, and none acting as if they really believe it, but its time the regulators woke up to the fact.

Re: Regulator??

@YAAC: Unfortunately the market normally offers the solution long after some poor bastard has lost the shirt off of his back. I would argue that major shareholders (UK Gov etc) have an interest in forcing their hand from the port of diminishing shareholder value as does the regulator from the point of ensuring the continuance and stability of the retail banking sector. Having this bunch of arse-clowns regularly fuck up because of their pound shop IT setup is completely unacceptable.

You may also wish to note the article mentions that switch forms cannot be processed.

Re: Regulator??

Spot the odd one out...

Lord Stevenson, former chairman, HBOS Bank

Andy Hornby, former CEO, HBOS Bank

Sir Fred Goodwin, former CEO, RBS Bank

Sir Tom McKillup, former chairman, RBS Bank

John McFall MP, former chairman, Treasury Select Committee

Alistair Darling, former Chancellor of the Exchequer

Sir Terry Wogan, former presenter of the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show

It’s Terry Wogan, the only one with a banking qualification.

Re: Consequence

If the rest of your credit report is clean, then one 'missed' payment is going to have minimal effect

If you work in finance you're expected to have a clean credit record. The effect of not having same will be missed employment opportunities (how many is certainly debateable, but it'll be a number larger than zero).

Santander/others may not back out the record on the customers say so, but they certainly will if RBS meet any perceived costs of the late payment to the lender. Its one of those few problems that are genuinely rectifiable with money.

Re: Consequence

Frankly Santander screwed up my credit rating by refusing to take several payments sent to them and then reporting it as my fault. And still haven't/ won't make the correction.

Of course the mistake was made by having anything to do with Santander in the first place... their 'security'.... name on the account, account number, address (look on a stolen statement for all of these), single or joint (50/50 and as many re-goes as you need) and then the killer... what was the last cash withdrawal/ payment/ transaction.... well, if you are like my dad and keep all paper it is in the stolen wallet with everything else, if like me you don't take the slips then it is a matter of your memory...

The approach is neither sensible nor secure and basically is a good reason to scrap any account with them before you are robbed blind.

Re: Consequence

Many years ago, Girobank once processed a cheque for £1000.00 (one thousand pounds) paid into one of my accounts as £10.00 (ten pounds), even though the cheque was correctly filled in, both words and numbers.

It took about two weeks for them to fix it after I spotted it, because they had to retrieve the original cheque from the document archive. In the meantime, £990 of my money was in limbo, having been taken from the source account but not appearing in the destination account.

They did refund all of the failed transaction charges, and fortunately, the mortgage company accepted that this was not my fault, and did not post a black-mark. Another fortunate thing was that this was the only direct debit from that account.

Re: Consequence

All banks report everything to Experian on a monthly basis. Generally it's minimum balance, max balance, on-time payments. It's not for the reporting bank (or Experian) to judge what is good or bad, just have the facts. The company that subsequently read the report are the ones who choose how to judge that behaviour. You're thinking about referring to debt collection/recovery (either internal or external), not what I'm talking about.

As to whether it's the straw to break the camel's back, then yes, that would be RBS' fault. Customers on the edge of a mortgage approval can be tipped over it - there has to be a cusp somewhere, and so one missed payment can make the difference.

Re: Consequence

Most send a status code every month, so your record should read - 0 0 0 [repeat 36 times] to show that you have been on time every month for the last year. If the payment doesn't arrive one month, then they will automatically send a '1' to say you are 1 month late.

Re: Consequence

Re: adding amendments to black marks - you could try this through Noddle, who offer a basic free equivalent of Experian's service. I've used it myself before, though not for anything serious (thus far I've avoided any really bad knocks against my credit rating...)

Re: Consequence

@AC a human may read and sympathise but the program assessing your history wont and the policy of whoever cares to check your history will likely not be flexible enough to authorise whoever it is your talking to to take that into account. It will require a lot of unnecessary effort on your part to rectify a blemish on your credit report. Also if you get 3 strikes before its a problem, you now only get 2 through no fault of your own.

if its your mistake to make that's on you, when your bank makes a mistake its still on you.

Re: Well perhaps...

Which generally means an old long in the tooth engineer like myself stands half a chance... where as most kids are used to object obfuscation programming and stand no hope of working anything out without a degree in pointless buzzwords making the obvious sound impressive

Re: Should be shutting down soon

"every last company has some customers who have experienced a horror story"

A. Some companies have more than others.

B. Zero would be a good number to aim for.