Fun With RBS and Banking for Expatriates

[Richard Lee]

Last week, a cash machine in the nearest reasonable sized town to where I live ate my UK bank debit card.  No problem, thought I, let the bank know and they will send out a replacement.  It was a bit complicated getting through, because The Royal Bank of Scotland is splitting up, so there is a new call centre which deals with some accounts (such as mine) but not others.  However, a new card was ordered.

 

A couple of days ago I received an email from The Royal Bank of Scotland.  They told me that they do not send debit cards to Bulgaria.  They said that there had been issues with "mail being intercepted  on the way to addresses in your country of residence".

 

To be frank, I am a bit baffled.  I have not had much mail from Britain go missing; the one item that wasn't received could just as easily have gone missing in the UK.  I am aware that there are some issues with the UK postal service, especially in some areas.

 

Other UK banks send debit cards to Bulgaria.  Previously, the RBS sent cards to me in Bulgaria, with no problems.  (Annoyingly enough, they changed my credit card twice in about a year, which meant I had to contact Kernow about a pre-order each time.)

 

I rang the new call centre yesterday.  The people seemed to be trying their best, despite possibly being new to the job.  They told me that my branch would ring me.  Unfortunately, that didn't happen.  (The reason could be that the RBS on-line banking shows an error if you input a non-UK telephone number - I have formed an opinion on the capabilities of the person who specified their software.)

 

Rang the another helpdesk that seems to deal with card security this afternoon.  A very nice lady tried to put me through to team that deals with dispatching cards to outside the UK.  No answer (it was a few minutes after 2 PM UK time, so I presume that they were a tad late back from lunch).  Got through about quarter of an hour later.  They still wouldn't budge.  I told them that the option that they had suggested of sending the card to a UK relative was unsatisfactory.  In the end I agreed for them to send it to a branch of the RBS that I might be able to get to when I visit the UK, for them to keep with the expectation that I will pick it up in September.

 

Surely a debit card without a PIN number is unusable?  (The lady said that they do send PIN numbers to Bulgaria.)

[Horsetan]

.....Surely a debit card without a PIN number is unusable?  (The lady said that they do send PIN numbers to Bulgaria.)

 

To the card cloners (many of whom seem to hail from Bulgaria and Romania), this isn't necessarily a problem.....