Monica Laliberte WRAL TV 5 consumer advocate tries to match abandoned property to owners, called my husband RE $40,000 in abandoned property in the state of NC in our name. This turned out to be our retirement account w/ RBC in Cary, NC held in a money market checking account. We had left it there untouched for over 3 years w/o a transaction on it, RBC says they simply turned it over as abandoned property sent an unmarked 1st class mailing letter for notification, zeroed out balance on an October 08 statement, which we seldom pay attention to - because we do not use the account, and know exactly how much money is saved there.

Now it's up to us to do all the paperwork to resolve from the state I researched the NC abandoned property rules, and RBC seems to be in compliance, you would think with $40,000 on the line, a current address, current phone number, and a local Cary, NC connection, the bank would have at least given me the courtesy of a phone call, or a certified letter, or a signature requirement to close my account. Today they joined the ranks of customer no service. [snip] did not acknowledge that that is not an acceptable way to treat a long time customer and depositor, and said it was up to us to fix the problem with the state, The account was closed on October 6, and we have lost 7 months interest on this account.

I think RBC abandoned property should be tightened, some process notification attempts to locate the depositors (more than just an innocuous first class letter - that probably looked like the other 7-8 bank offers we get each week. I'm glad in the time of economic financial downturn, RBC can afford to just throw away good customers. RBC has really bad customer service.