Bank staff accused of credit card deception
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is facing corrosive accusations of deceptive conduct by the customer services division of its credit cards department.
Bank staff accused of credit card deception
A former employee accuses RBS of training staff to lie to customers to prevent them cancelling credit card payment protection insurance.”
A former employee of RBS has blown the whistle on the department, thought to be a 30 person office in Manchester.
It is not the first time the bank has been in hot water for sharp practice. The RBS was previously fined for breaking money laundering rules in 2002. It was also forced to reopen mortgage misselling claims following rules changes by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).
The latest controversy was sparked by a complaint this month to the FSA by an ex-employee of the bank. The whistleblower provided the watchdog with detailed information on RBS customer service policy, alleging members of staff were specially trained to deceive customers.
The alleged guidelines aim to prevent customers from cancelling the bank’s Credit Card Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), itself an already controversial product.
Accusations
The whistleblower, who was employed in the RBS customer loyalty team, reported the ‘unethical’ practices to the FSA after complaints to supervisors were allegedly ignored.
They alleged staff members pretended to pass customers seeking to cancel PPI policies to a different department, when in fact they simply transferred callers on to the person next to them.
The second staff member would then leave the customer on hold for at least 5 minutes in the hope that they would hang up, frustrated.
If this ruse failed, customers would be offered a goodwill gesture in an attempt to keep them from cancelling their policies.
The whistleblower also told the FSA customers were also wrongly told they could not cancel their policy without repaying their credit card balance in full and cancelling the card.
Staff Incentive
It was also alleged that RBS call centre staff were given incentives for treating customers in this way.
For each customer duped into not cancelling PPI, staff members would get £5 in tax-free shopping vouchers up to a maximum of £500 per month.
By contrast, staff in other RBS departments who persuaded a customer to retain a savings or current account were only rewarded with £1.
Investigation
The RBS said this was the subject of an ongoing investigation. The FSA declined to comment beyond stating that they took “all allegations against regulated companies seriously.”
A poster on the ‘This Is Money’ website, who claimed to have worked in the same department, supported the accusations against RBS: “I can assure you that this does indeed happen and I personally made £6,000 worth of vouchers tax free in 2007.”
“I've worked in this same department in Manchester and it is the only dept that deals with credit card PPI cancellations for RBS.”
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