So NatWest have been making a big song and dance of late about their new Customer Charter

You see, they take the notion of their ‘brand promise’ very seriously, and want to make sure they actually deliver on this. Oh yes. They say so themselves, so it must be true:

You see when we say ‘Helpful Banking’, we want to make sure it really is.

They say the charter’s a public promise to become Britain’s most helpful bank. It’s got lovely-sounding promises- and my, don’t they sound sincere?

We are committed to making banking easy
We are committed to helping when you need us
We are committed to supporting the communities we work in
We are committed to listening

Except that it’s all well and good to promise something, but if you’re going to make a song and dance about how much you want to BE helpful, instead of just saying you’re helpful, you might do well to see if you can actually deliver on the promises you’re making.

I’m a NatWest customer. Like most people, I’ve never bothered moving my current account – I got my first bank account at NatWest (yes, I wanted the pig-shaped piggy banks they gave out, my loyalties were easily-bought back then) and it always seemed too much hassle to move.

I personally don’t find them the most helpful bank. In fact, I keep coming up against fairly simple things I’d like them to do that other UK high street banks offer their customers, and they seem not to be able to do anything about it.

Take travelling abroad. Earlier this year I was travelling a lot for work. Lots of countries I’d never been to before, so fair enough a withdrawal in Buenos Aires out of the blue probably looks a bit dodgy. So they block my card. We’re running late, we need to get in a cab to get to the meeting, and I can’t get cash out. Luckily my colleague’s able to help out, and we make it in time.

So I call NatWest to unblock the card, and say, OK I’m going to be travelling a lot over the next few weeks, if I tell you where I’m going to be, can you log it on the system so when I do try and use the card in these places, you don’t block me and I then have to spend a fortune calling your call centre to get it unblocked. You know, like other card providers do. No, they say, there’s nothing they can do. Even if they put it on the system, it’ll still block the card – nothing they can do, it’s just the way it works. So every country I go to, the card’s blocked, and I have to call them again. Racking up a whopping phone bill in the process.

Ah, they say, it’s for your own protection. To stop fraud, they say. It’s for your own good. But, I say, Lloyds don’t automatically block you. If you use your card abroad which triggers the system to think there’s some kind of ‘abnormal activity’ on your card, it sends you a text and asks you to respond if that transaction was in fact you, or if it was some shady fraudster. If you say it wasn’t you, the card’s blocked. If you don’t respond, they block it as a precautionary measure. But if it is you, you simply send back a text, they don’t block your card, and you can carry on using it.

Ah, well, sorry we don’t offer that. Would you consider it, I say – it’s a lot more customer friendly, and it only costs me the price of a text instead of the time and expense of trying to get my card unblocked, as well as actually letting me withdraw cash, which is, y’know, its intended purpose. I don’t know, they say, it’s really not my decision.

So bouncing round the world, my card kept getting blocked. Hoorah. Thanks NatWest – who very helpfully said ‘yes we know it’s annoying but it’s the system, there’s just nothing we can do, it’s the fraud protection, you see’. Very helpful banking indeed.

Or getting a new card. Like most people I go to work, when they send out a new card NatWest require it to be signed for, usually via a courier company. For ‘security reasons’ they won’t send it to my work. They can only send to my home. But I won’t be there, I say. Sorry, they say, it’s the rules. So they deliver the card to my home, leave a card that says ‘Sorry you weren’t in’ and I can have the delivery redelivered to my work – as long as I have photo ID when I sign (in fact, I can even give the receptionist my driving licence and she’s allowed to sign on my behalf). So it ends up at my work, where I wanted it to be, but it’s had to go through two courier journeys, instead of one, which is a waste of time, money, and petrol. If NatWest let me just skip step 1 and go straight to step 2, which shows it patently IS possible to get it delivered to my work as long as I have the right ID to ensure security, I would get my card quicker, it would cost them less and it would reduce emissions of a courier driving around town for a journey we’ve established up front will be unnecessary.

But they can’t do that. Sorry madam, it’s just the rules. So very very helpful.

So I ask about other options. Could I have the card delivered to a branch, and I’ll collect it there? Oh yes madam, we can do that – but it has to be your ‘home’ branch. My home branch is still back in Manchester, because I never bothered to change the ‘home’ branch as there never seemed any need to do so, as I do all my banking online. I offer to bring in photo ID, name signed in blood, first born child, whatever it takes to get the sodding card, but no, they can’t do this. But Lloyds let you collect a card from a branch that isn’t your home branch, I say, why can they do this but you can’t? Er, we don’t know madam, I’m afraid your options are to have the card delivered to your home or your home branch – oh and while you’re on the line, would you be interested in hearing about any of our other products we’d love to sell you.

So, NatWest you’re far from the most helpful bank. It’s lovely that you’re giving time to community projects and offering MoneySense classes to schools, really it is. But you’re my bank. I want you to get the banking bit right. And my experience of you is that you really aren’t very helpful at all. And especially not the most helpful bank when you refuse to offer services that would make my banking experience unquestionably better, that other high street banks appear to be able to offer without any real problems. So not really doing too well on that ‘Britain’s most helpful bank’ bit, are you?

And it’s not just me:

Natwest, one of two banks that taxpayers rescued in the credit crunch, is turning over a new leaf with its customer charter and it is making sure that everyone knows it is committed to becoming ‘Britain’s most helpful bank’.

But helpful isn’t the word that some critics are using to describe Natwest, part of Royal Bank of Scotland.

Instead, they accuse the bank of using its new customer charter as a smokescreen to hide bad news.

Although the charter pledges to extend opening hours at Natwest’s busiest branches and maintain ‘banking services’ where it is the only bank left in a community, the critics say it omits to mention that simultaneously it is axing small branches while reducing hours in other, mainly rural, branches.

[ Critics turn on NatWest's customer charter ]

And it’s all well and good spending millions on flashy ad campaigns pledging your commitment to working towards Britain’s most helpful bank, but it’s ever so slightly undermined if this doesn’t come from the heart of your business and developed from the inside out (Justin Basini wrote a fantastic post about this a while ago, which I’d heartily recommend).

Yes, I know I really should get off my arse and change my current account if I’m so unhappy with NatWest (hello inertia!).

We all know that a brand promise is usually that and we’re used to brands failing to deliver against it. And this is probably more of a rant than a particularly enlightening post, as should we really be surprised that NatWest’s grand claims are just that?

But wouldn’t it be nice, wouldn’t it be just awesome, if a brand actually did what it said it would, eh?