Natwest Student account - not happy

Maccy

Maccy

Maccy

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Opened my student account with Natwest at the beginning of September, as I was initially attracted by their rail card offer. Opened the account in the Watford branch, no problems - they were great.
Give a week or two and I get the student welcome pack - no sign of a form to fill in about the rail card. OK, I thought, it'll arrive shortly after.
Cue 2/3 weeks later and there's still no sign (by this time, I've started university). So I phone the student account number and they advise me to go into the nearest branch. Off I toddle, wait for about half an hour to see someone and explain my problem to her. She was great, rang up someone and informed me that a form was being sent out. Another 2 weeks pass and I don't get a rail card form, but another welcome pack containing rubbish - great.
This brings me on to last week (week beginning 13th Oct), so I go in again, think it was on Tuesday 14th and explain my problem, thankfully no queue. Guy at the desk offers me a phone and I call the number myself, woman on the other end explains that I've been put on a gap year for some reason - I never said I was taking a gap year, and initially that I was starting university this year. So she took a few details and changed my account code to a student. Hopefully this will solve it, I thought.

So now this brings me to today - just got off the phone to Dad and he said that two things from Natwest have arrived. ANOTHER student welcome pack containing a load of crap and then a letter stating that they can't verify with the university my student status.
This is the biggest load of rubbish, I can't believe this. When I first opened my account they saw my UCAS letter and my Portsmouth university confirmation letter proving that I was starting this year!!

I'm really disappointed/angry at Natwest and am on the last straw. I'm planning to go in to the Portsmouth branch again this afternoon with this letter (Dad is scanning it in and emailing to me so I can print it out).

Just needed to vent, and if anyone can give some advice on how to go about getting this sorted I'd appreciate it!

Thanks for reading a long winded post!
 
worst thing is Natwest are one the better banks :(

Dealing with them is sooo much easier than HSBC or Barclays
 
theyre awful. give it 4 months and they will send you a letter saying if you dont pay off some of your student overdraft then they will proceed legal action and that you should ut up your card and cheque book and post them to them or be charged :/

oh and they will send the warning letters to the address you changed 2 months ago so you dont even get them...
 
Sone said:
Dealing with them is sooo much easier than HSBC or Barclays
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really? Never had any trouble with any of my HSBC accounts :confused:

Halifax though are the worst ****er's ever, they lost my £1,800, took me ages to get it back :/
 
I just can't believe how they've treated me like this. Do they not want my business? Certainly the impression I get...
 
Are you registered at uni and all that tosh? Natwest have been fine for me regarding rail card. Got a new one every year sent out to me without requesting them.

btw. "andy" that tune from the tiga video is housemeister - we need cash.
 
Maccy said:
There's roughly £2k in the account, is that virtually nothing?
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to a company that deals in 100's of billions of pounds?
yes, it's will acount for less than 0.000000000000000000000001% of thier income this year most likley.
 
Maccy said:
This is the biggest load of rubbish, I can't believe this. When I first opened my account they saw my UCAS letter and my Portsmouth university confirmation letter proving that I was starting this year!!
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Took me ages to get a student account (opened it after my first year). Website and staff said that I just needed to bring my original UCAS letter, which they photocopied in branch and said all was fine.
About 2-3 weeks later I got a letter from the Natwest student dept saying they needed proof I was a student :confused:
Apparently if you've already started uni, they need another form of proof (letter from uni). I would presume it's because so many people drop out, so UCAS letter means nothing really.
 
I've applied for a graduate account twice through their website and still aint heard from them. It's been 3 weeks.
 
I had no problems setting up natwest last year, but a few people i know have also applied online and not recieved anything. Seems like they havnt really got themselves together this year!
 
Go to your uni and ask for a letter confirming your enrolement in a course at that uni. Take this to Natwest and explain your problem. Express that you are sick of waiting weeks for this to work out and that you want it sorted immediately as not having a railcard is incurring you extra costs in travelling. Then get them to fix it...
I had the same issue with Natwest..just be firm and dont take no for an answer and theyll sort it out.
 
my natwest student account application process went really smoothly. i got the student card form, but i could even submit a photo online instead of by post, so it took even less time to get my railcard.

one question though, do i need to apply for a Credit-card & Overdraft or will they just give me them?
 
I tried applying for a Natwest student account several times last year. None of them came to fruition so I just gave up in the end. Didn't even get anything in the post.
 
Yeah natwest suck a bit (a few friends got their student account and only one got hist student rail card and he quit after a few months)

Anyway most banks fail at setting up student accounts (it took me several attempts to sort out the rbs one, which then turned out to be unusable in ulsterbanks up here)

Only plus was ulsterbank were really nice about setting mine up...
 
Maccy said:
There's roughly £2k in the account, is that virtually nothing?
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lol, as others have said, its a ridiculously small amount. Also, 99.99999% of student accounts will be in the red through lots of the time throughout the 3/4 years they are at uni, you might have 2k now but they expect(and is almost certain to happen that) your student loan won't be great, towards the end of every term you'll shockingly dip into your overdraft and stay in it till your next student loan. By the end of 3 or 4 years you might well be 2-3k in overdraft, with a large student loan to pay off and no expectation you'll be filling that account up for ages.

So more than likely your investment, will be them loaning you money interest free for the best part of 3 years. Can't imagine why they couldn't care less.....

Not to mention they probably have a list of everyone at various uni's, contact the uni's and ask them to verify they have actually registered. Ucas number and acceptance letter mean absolutely nothing. They check if you've actually registered to the course and more than likely the problem here would be your uni and not them. Uni's late with paperwork, never..........
 
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