RBS sends customer bank card stamped 'Mr Please'

Updated
RBS reduces bad loans provision
RBS reduces bad loans provision



They say politeness costs nothing - but it appears that in the case of one Dover man it's left him unable to access his cash.

Terry Sutton had applied for a new bank card from Royal Bank of Scotland using its WebChat live internet chat service. And, when asked how he would like his name to appear, he wrote "Mr T Sutton, please".

But when the card appeared, he was astonished to see that it was printed with the name 'Mr T Sutton Please'.

"I could understand it more if I had ordered it over the phone, but by typing it I used the comma," he tells Metro."It surprises me they couldn't use my existing personal details to work from. It's ridiculous, but to be honest I almost wet myself laughing."

Mr Sutton contacted RBS and has now been sent a replacement card.

"Printing the wrong name on Mr Sutton's debit card was a cut and paste error from our WebChat system," says the bank. "This is unacceptable, and we should have identified and corrected it before the card made it to print."

Banks - and other companies - need to be careful with computer-generated documents. In one rather wonderful example back in the 1990s, an IT agency was asked by NatWest to create a marketing software system targeting its wealthiest customers.

Unfortunately, a programmer decided to test the system using the placeholder name 'Dear Rich Bastard' - and this is what was sent out to dozens of customers before the mistake was spotted. The company was forced to visit each one in person and apologise.

More recently, 80-year-old widow Mrs Fulton was shocked to receive a letter from Standard Life addressed to 'The Executors of Mrs B Fulton'. Inside, the letter read: "I was sorry to learn of [Mrs Fulton's] death when the bank returned her June pension instalment to us. I offer my sincere condolences on behalf of Standard Life. Please can you contact me with the date that Mrs Fulton passed away."

More frequent is the opposite problem - organisations that refuse to accept a person is, actually dead. Last month, we reported on the case of Maria Raybould, a 56-year-old widow from Cardiff, who went through a nightmare trying to convince T-Mobile that her husband had passed away. Even taking both his death certificate and his ashes into the shop failed to stop the phone company sending her letters threatening court action.



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