| "HOUSTON V. HOUSTON ET AL." CONTINUED |
The manager didn't reply. This was way over her head. The branch is nothing more than a Royal
Bank ATM anyway. An ATM with a piss poor attitude. That's all Royal Bank has ever been to
me, an ATM. An ATM with way too much leeway to get into the accounts of customers. I got
ripped off by an ATM. I need this kind of trouble from an automated bank machine?
I didn't hear from the branch manager. However, I did get the attention of Royal Bank's Toronto,
Ontario head office. An e-mail from a Senior Client Care Specialist with RBC's Toronto Client
Care Centre arrived in my in-box on January 3. This is when I found out RBC Financial Group has
a department dedicated solely to giving away their clients' cash. The department acts as a
collections office for the government. They've got employees in place waiting to give customer
funds away. That should be a warning sign to stay away from this bank. Any bank that has a
department at the ready to shovel its customers cash out the door should be avoided like malaria.
When war breaks out and the government starts confiscating funds from the populace, Royal Bank
is prepared to assist instantly, as they did with me. This division within RBC Financial Group is
called the National Third Party Demands department. The ATM needs a National Third Party
Demands department? Sounds like a political party doesn't it? The National Third Party Demands
department didn't decipher the instructions on the document CRA served on the bank, RBC didn't
bother to determine its legal responsibilities pursuant to the third party request from CRA.
Apparently National Third Party Demands isn't there to determine whether the third party request is
legal. They're not tax lawyers or accountants. National Third Party Demands was positioned only
to expedite the removal of my privately-owned funds from my account. The demand arrived, the
demand was acted upon, no questions asked of anybody. There was no wall between National
Third Party demands and my private funds. No wall between the ATM and my cash. RBC seems
to think a deposit into my account is a payment to them. It's not, and neither is a withdrawal from
my account a payment received from RBC. A government document was sent to a Vancouver
branch and National Third Party Demands had a job do. They started digging into my account like
it was a private RBC slush fund. To find out, as an RBC Financial Group client, that the fees I paid
for twenty years underwrite a department that collects debt from clients on behalf of third parties is
sickening. It's repulsive. If National Third Party Demands was collecting on behalf of RBC it
would make some sense. They're not, they're collecting for third parties. I could understand if you
owe money to the bank then the bank may have reason to collect from you. But to collect for third
parties? The discovery of a mysterious RBC office existing solely for the purpose of avidly assisting
not its customers but its customers creditors raises some serious questions about Royal Bank. How
big is Royal Bank's National Third Party Demands department and how many people does it
employ? Is Royal Bank actually remitting such a magnitude of cash from customer accounts it
needs a separate corporate division to handle the task? Obviously they do. Is a job in the National
Third Party Demands office a full time position? Does Royal Bank receive a fee or commission
when it delivers cash to a third party? Is that how the department is funded? A third party fee for
remitting customer funds to the government would explain why the bank was so doggedly eager to
funnel every last dime out of my account to the Canadian government.
Whether the department is remunerated by a third party fee or not, Royal Bank is actually paying
employees to confiscate client funds on the instruction of third parties. That's the truth. In my case
those employees were paid to undertake the confiscation illegally. They were paid to steal from me.
The bank should have to disclose to customers that it has a separate division that functions as a
debt collection operation, seizing cash from clients to settle third party liability. Beware and think
twice about doing business here if you have aggressive creditors on your tail. Why? Because Royal
Bank will help your creditors in every way they can, Royal Bank will not help you, the customer. I
was dumped by Royal Bank and left to fend for myself and I'm still not sure why. An operation
known as National Third Party Demands is a suspicious perversion of business ideologies. How can
a closeted back-room department that collects debt for third parties be legal? It's a screaming
conflict of interest. A bank collecting debt for third parties from its customers? The practice should
be declared unlawful and outlawed.
And it's not that Royal Bank had a legal obligation to give my money away. Nobody forced the
bank to plunder my account. Rather RBC eagerly wanted to give the money away. They couldn't
help themselves, it was something they had to do. The CRA form gave National Third Party
Demands a virgin bank account to rape. RBC had all the legal latitude in the world to say no to
CRA. Instead RBC policy dictates they say no to the customer. Royal Bank put up a blockade
against me. RBC fought me every inch of the way. CRA said attack this man's finances and Royal
Bank did everything illegal it could to help. Royal Bank went above and beyond, well beyond, the
written instructions from CRA. RBC may have received verbal directions from Canada Revenue
Agency, I don't know. It seems likely since the bank sure wasn't acting on the written CRA
document instructions. And while an office for accessing customer accounts is important to Royal
Bank of Canada, a department for interpreting demand documents, a compliance department with
qualified legal advisors, is nowhere to be found. It took three weeks for RBC to figure out (or
admit) that a Requirement to Pay form isn't a court order, let alone to take a look at what the form
actually instructed the bank to do. But by that time the damage was inflicted, the bridge had been
burned to the ground, the account had been looted and I'd been booted. You don't want Royal
Bank to prepare dinner for you. These folks don't give a damn about instructions. They wouldn't
follow my request to comply with government instructions, nor would they follow the instructions
on the CRA Requirement to Pay form. It's RBC's way or the highway.
According to the Senior Client Care Specialist the Third Party Demands department is required to
act on the CRA document and remit all of my funds on deposit. The Senior Client Care Specialist
said it isn't necessary for my account number to be on the CRA notice for it to apply to my
chequing account. The Senior Client Care Specialist noted that there are monthly deposits into my
account, pension income I receive. If I could provide proof of the origin of the funds from the
remitters by Tuesday, January 8, 2008 (three business days!), the Senior Client Care Specialist said
she would request a review of the matter by the Third Party Demands department. More RBC
blocks. Royal Bank had resorted to the tactic of making up policy on whim to make me go away.
The origin of the funds holds no pertinence to compliance with the CRA document. It doesn't
matter where the money in the account is derived from. In a bank account a dollar side by side
another dollar is identical to the other. A deposit is a deposit, regardless of the origin of the funds.
Either Royal Bank is required to seize the funds in the account or it isn't. In actual fact the
Requirement to Pay didn't instruct Royal Bank to tamper with my account in any way. And a
deadline! Not only was there no legal reason for the Senior Client Care Specialist to demand that I
present proof of the origin of the funds to have my grievance reviewed, there was no legitimate
reason for Royal Bank's customer complaints department to set an impossibly tight three business
day cutoff for receiving information from me. There was no way I'd be able to contact and receive
the documentation from the remitters and then send it to RBC's Toronto head office within three
business days. An absurd request for RBC to make of a customer. Of course RBC was counting
on my inability to disclose the information. RBC Financial Group was telling me to get lost. RBC
appears to be accustomed to pushing people around. You want us to conduct an investigation into
all that money going missing from your account? Get down on your knees and beg.
I didn't really believe Royal Bank had legal grounds to request this very confidential personal
information from me. How dumb does RBC think its clients are? I decided nonetheless to play
along to see where all this was going. I had the proof in my file so on January 7 I faxed the Senior
Client Care Specialist (and the C.E.O.) my most recent pay stub and last year's T4A tax statement.
That same day the Senior Client Care Specialist e-mailed me back to say Royal Bank refunded my
account the $6,872.88 RBC withdrew on December 19, 2007 excluding $5,000.00. Excluding my
five thousands dollars! She claimed the $5,000.00 deposit was still subject to seizure. She told me
it was necessary for me to attend a local branch to withdraw the partial recovery of my funds and
close the account. She also claimed that the $602.26 CPP payment had been rejected by RBC and
returned to the federal government. Rejected and returned to the government? Call the federal
government to receive your payment she wrote, we sent it back. These were all lies. This is where
the Senior Client Care Specialist's pattern of extreme lying became apparent. She wasn't a Client
Care Specialist. The Client Care Centre doesn't care. She was a Lies n' Excuses Specialist.
The Senior Client Care Specialist's explanations weren't consistent with the evidence. The account
statement didn't show the removal of the CPP payment as a canceled transaction as she claimed.
According to the statement the transaction was an elementary withdrawal from my account. Simple
as that. The account statement hadn't lied, Royal Bank's Client Care Specialist had lied. This illegal
removal of my cash was not a rejection of a CPP payment. Royal Bank's withdrawal from my
account amounted to theft. Why would Royal Bank think I can recover stolen funds from the
government?
Bank ATM anyway. An ATM with a piss poor attitude. That's all Royal Bank has ever been to
me, an ATM. An ATM with way too much leeway to get into the accounts of customers. I got
ripped off by an ATM. I need this kind of trouble from an automated bank machine?
I didn't hear from the branch manager. However, I did get the attention of Royal Bank's Toronto,
Ontario head office. An e-mail from a Senior Client Care Specialist with RBC's Toronto Client
Care Centre arrived in my in-box on January 3. This is when I found out RBC Financial Group has
a department dedicated solely to giving away their clients' cash. The department acts as a
collections office for the government. They've got employees in place waiting to give customer
funds away. That should be a warning sign to stay away from this bank. Any bank that has a
department at the ready to shovel its customers cash out the door should be avoided like malaria.
When war breaks out and the government starts confiscating funds from the populace, Royal Bank
is prepared to assist instantly, as they did with me. This division within RBC Financial Group is
called the National Third Party Demands department. The ATM needs a National Third Party
Demands department? Sounds like a political party doesn't it? The National Third Party Demands
department didn't decipher the instructions on the document CRA served on the bank, RBC didn't
bother to determine its legal responsibilities pursuant to the third party request from CRA.
Apparently National Third Party Demands isn't there to determine whether the third party request is
legal. They're not tax lawyers or accountants. National Third Party Demands was positioned only
to expedite the removal of my privately-owned funds from my account. The demand arrived, the
demand was acted upon, no questions asked of anybody. There was no wall between National
Third Party demands and my private funds. No wall between the ATM and my cash. RBC seems
to think a deposit into my account is a payment to them. It's not, and neither is a withdrawal from
my account a payment received from RBC. A government document was sent to a Vancouver
branch and National Third Party Demands had a job do. They started digging into my account like
it was a private RBC slush fund. To find out, as an RBC Financial Group client, that the fees I paid
for twenty years underwrite a department that collects debt from clients on behalf of third parties is
sickening. It's repulsive. If National Third Party Demands was collecting on behalf of RBC it
would make some sense. They're not, they're collecting for third parties. I could understand if you
owe money to the bank then the bank may have reason to collect from you. But to collect for third
parties? The discovery of a mysterious RBC office existing solely for the purpose of avidly assisting
not its customers but its customers creditors raises some serious questions about Royal Bank. How
big is Royal Bank's National Third Party Demands department and how many people does it
employ? Is Royal Bank actually remitting such a magnitude of cash from customer accounts it
needs a separate corporate division to handle the task? Obviously they do. Is a job in the National
Third Party Demands office a full time position? Does Royal Bank receive a fee or commission
when it delivers cash to a third party? Is that how the department is funded? A third party fee for
remitting customer funds to the government would explain why the bank was so doggedly eager to
funnel every last dime out of my account to the Canadian government.
Whether the department is remunerated by a third party fee or not, Royal Bank is actually paying
employees to confiscate client funds on the instruction of third parties. That's the truth. In my case
those employees were paid to undertake the confiscation illegally. They were paid to steal from me.
The bank should have to disclose to customers that it has a separate division that functions as a
debt collection operation, seizing cash from clients to settle third party liability. Beware and think
twice about doing business here if you have aggressive creditors on your tail. Why? Because Royal
Bank will help your creditors in every way they can, Royal Bank will not help you, the customer. I
was dumped by Royal Bank and left to fend for myself and I'm still not sure why. An operation
known as National Third Party Demands is a suspicious perversion of business ideologies. How can
a closeted back-room department that collects debt for third parties be legal? It's a screaming
conflict of interest. A bank collecting debt for third parties from its customers? The practice should
be declared unlawful and outlawed.
And it's not that Royal Bank had a legal obligation to give my money away. Nobody forced the
bank to plunder my account. Rather RBC eagerly wanted to give the money away. They couldn't
help themselves, it was something they had to do. The CRA form gave National Third Party
Demands a virgin bank account to rape. RBC had all the legal latitude in the world to say no to
CRA. Instead RBC policy dictates they say no to the customer. Royal Bank put up a blockade
against me. RBC fought me every inch of the way. CRA said attack this man's finances and Royal
Bank did everything illegal it could to help. Royal Bank went above and beyond, well beyond, the
written instructions from CRA. RBC may have received verbal directions from Canada Revenue
Agency, I don't know. It seems likely since the bank sure wasn't acting on the written CRA
document instructions. And while an office for accessing customer accounts is important to Royal
Bank of Canada, a department for interpreting demand documents, a compliance department with
qualified legal advisors, is nowhere to be found. It took three weeks for RBC to figure out (or
admit) that a Requirement to Pay form isn't a court order, let alone to take a look at what the form
actually instructed the bank to do. But by that time the damage was inflicted, the bridge had been
burned to the ground, the account had been looted and I'd been booted. You don't want Royal
Bank to prepare dinner for you. These folks don't give a damn about instructions. They wouldn't
follow my request to comply with government instructions, nor would they follow the instructions
on the CRA Requirement to Pay form. It's RBC's way or the highway.
According to the Senior Client Care Specialist the Third Party Demands department is required to
act on the CRA document and remit all of my funds on deposit. The Senior Client Care Specialist
said it isn't necessary for my account number to be on the CRA notice for it to apply to my
chequing account. The Senior Client Care Specialist noted that there are monthly deposits into my
account, pension income I receive. If I could provide proof of the origin of the funds from the
remitters by Tuesday, January 8, 2008 (three business days!), the Senior Client Care Specialist said
she would request a review of the matter by the Third Party Demands department. More RBC
blocks. Royal Bank had resorted to the tactic of making up policy on whim to make me go away.
The origin of the funds holds no pertinence to compliance with the CRA document. It doesn't
matter where the money in the account is derived from. In a bank account a dollar side by side
another dollar is identical to the other. A deposit is a deposit, regardless of the origin of the funds.
Either Royal Bank is required to seize the funds in the account or it isn't. In actual fact the
Requirement to Pay didn't instruct Royal Bank to tamper with my account in any way. And a
deadline! Not only was there no legal reason for the Senior Client Care Specialist to demand that I
present proof of the origin of the funds to have my grievance reviewed, there was no legitimate
reason for Royal Bank's customer complaints department to set an impossibly tight three business
day cutoff for receiving information from me. There was no way I'd be able to contact and receive
the documentation from the remitters and then send it to RBC's Toronto head office within three
business days. An absurd request for RBC to make of a customer. Of course RBC was counting
on my inability to disclose the information. RBC Financial Group was telling me to get lost. RBC
appears to be accustomed to pushing people around. You want us to conduct an investigation into
all that money going missing from your account? Get down on your knees and beg.
I didn't really believe Royal Bank had legal grounds to request this very confidential personal
information from me. How dumb does RBC think its clients are? I decided nonetheless to play
along to see where all this was going. I had the proof in my file so on January 7 I faxed the Senior
Client Care Specialist (and the C.E.O.) my most recent pay stub and last year's T4A tax statement.
That same day the Senior Client Care Specialist e-mailed me back to say Royal Bank refunded my
account the $6,872.88 RBC withdrew on December 19, 2007 excluding $5,000.00. Excluding my
five thousands dollars! She claimed the $5,000.00 deposit was still subject to seizure. She told me
it was necessary for me to attend a local branch to withdraw the partial recovery of my funds and
close the account. She also claimed that the $602.26 CPP payment had been rejected by RBC and
returned to the federal government. Rejected and returned to the government? Call the federal
government to receive your payment she wrote, we sent it back. These were all lies. This is where
the Senior Client Care Specialist's pattern of extreme lying became apparent. She wasn't a Client
Care Specialist. The Client Care Centre doesn't care. She was a Lies n' Excuses Specialist.
The Senior Client Care Specialist's explanations weren't consistent with the evidence. The account
statement didn't show the removal of the CPP payment as a canceled transaction as she claimed.
According to the statement the transaction was an elementary withdrawal from my account. Simple
as that. The account statement hadn't lied, Royal Bank's Client Care Specialist had lied. This illegal
removal of my cash was not a rejection of a CPP payment. Royal Bank's withdrawal from my
account amounted to theft. Why would Royal Bank think I can recover stolen funds from the
government?
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