Don’t Bank On It - RBS Staff Brought To Account
WHAT with underhanded bank charges and a colourful history of dodgy dealing, one could be forgiven in thinking that the banking establishment had all the morals of a money-grabbing ethically bankrupt dog. (Albeit one who could deal with the intricacies of the global financial market while weeing against lampposts).
Surely not?
Well, according to the Guardian, the Royal Bank of Scotland is the latest bank to show its nasty side.
In a letter from the bank’s chief executive of retail market operations, Gordon Pell, RBS’ own staff has been threatened with disciplinary action if they decide not to open an RBS account. “Failure to do so will represent a breach of group policy and I will be obliged to write directly to your line manager asking them to progress this matter according to the group’s disciplinary policy”, writes Pell.
Apparently at interview stage, potential RBS staff are told that, in order to receive their salary, they will be required to open an account with the bank, a policy which has understandably angered finance union Amicus says the BBC. “If you work for Tesco you won’t be disciplined for buying your groceries from Sainsbury’s”, says union official Rob MacGregor, “RBS’s disproportionate and heavy-handed approach is counterproductive and bad for morale”.
Look out for RBS employees in the firm’s complaints department complaining to themselves about the bank’s high bank charges…
Posted: 23rd, March 2007 | In: Money Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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March 25th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
This is a bank which which is starting to think its image is impervious to public perception. Our own experience of working with RBSIF (Royal Bank of Scotland Invoice Finance) has been that if your A/R Ledger is in any way other than a simple invoice-out/payment-in (say Construction Industry like us), then you are going to have nightmares trying to work your way through the muddle they create with almost systematic obfuscation of the payment/posting trail. I am only sorry now that I didn’t go with my gut instinct when they showed me the clunky old piece of software they use for communication (sic) - via dial-up modem!!!
In nine years of trading, RBSIF has been the biggest disaster ever to befall our company. Not only do they make it almost impossible to figure out what they have done, with the mountains of unnecessary paperwork they send you, but in our case at least, they collect less than 10% of the invoices you send them and apparently do not have the ability to allocate even those few payments correctly. That then leaves you with the task of finding out which invoices have been paid and then collecting the debts you thought they were going to collect for you. At the same time as handing you the collection task back again, they start to retire the remaining 90% your debt as ‘too old’ to collect and term it “ineligible” , and then deduct the ineligible balance + paid-out balance from any amount you thought you were going to be able to to draw down. Thus, you very quickly have NO cash-flow and end up doing all the collections on their behalf yourself. The complete opposite of the service you thought you were buying when you went to RBS in the first place.
If you chose to use RBSIF I hope your experience turns out to be better than ours, but if I had my time again, I would have nothing to do with them. I wish we had listened to all those that told us their horror stories about factoring. Our relationship with RBSIF has almost killed this company and if you are thinking of using them, I suggest you listen to the horror stories and ask someone, maybe here in this community, if they have a similar commercial profile to your business, what has been their experience of working with RBSIF. I wish we had done that; we might not now be in the mess we are in.