How to get a credit card with the Royal Bank of Scotland

After nearly a year of trying, I finally got a credit card for my Royal Bank of Scotland business account today. Here is the story, one you won't find on my website, in all of its ridiculous detail.

♦March 2005: You set up your business account, request a credit card and sign various documents.

♦A few weeks later: you haven't heard anything about the credit card, so you call the business advisor. It seems you hadn't filled in the form, so he'll send you one in the post.

♦A few weeks later: you haven't heard anything about your application, so you call the business advisor. He tells you that head office had returned the form, but he could see nothing wrong with it, so he has resubmitted it.

♦A few weeks later: you haven't heard anything, so you call again. The business advisor is on holiday but his boss tells you that you've been given the wrong form and that for a business credit card you need to prove you have equity. She'll send you the right form.

♦Some time later: You're told there's a new type of credit card which doesn't need equity and you receive what you believe are the right forms.

♦A few weeks later: you haven't heard anything, so you call again. You are told the business advisor no longer works at the branch and his boss is away. Someone else calls you back to tell you that you are no longer the responsibility of anyone in your local branch but someone at a branch further away. This is news to you. They will refer your case to him.

♦Two weeks later: the business relationship manager in the second branch sends you a letter. He thanks you for your "recent" application for a business credit card. He probably doesn't get the joke. He gives you yet another form to fill in. Clearly the Royal Bank doesn't have enough information about you. You suspect the bank doesn't have business credit cards and is too embarrassed to admit it.

♦Around the same time: you see an advert for the Royal Bank telling you what a wonderful personal service it offers. It mentions nothing about waiting nine months to get the right forms or being moved without notification from one branch to the other. Your realise the new business relationship manager probably thinks it's a bit rubbish too, but he didn't commission the adverts.

♦Through all this time: you wonder why you've been paying bank charges every month on your Royal Bank personal account caused by not having a company credit card.

♦End of November: you fill in the latest form and send it to the man at the second branch in the vain hope that this will be the one that clinches it.

♦December: The business relationship manager calls you up, apologises for the delays so far, but promises that the card has been approved and it'll be on its way.

♦Some time later in December. Another call from the business relationship manager. It seems the whole process has gone on for so long that the application forms have been redesigned. So although your credit card has been approved, you can't get it until you've filled in yet another form. He'll send it in the post.

♦January: You fill in the new form, get it countersigned and returned to you, then return it to the bank.

♦February: Just before the year is out, the credit card arrives. Easy really, isn't it?