SAYNOTO0870.COM - Nationwide Building Society

sherbert Supreme Member Offline Posts: 2,011 Gender:	Re: Nationwide Building Society Reply #90 - Apr 15^th, 2009 at 5:03pm A couple I am more than happy with, which I do all business on line with, no problems and they are Yorkshire Building Society and also the Coventry Building Society. Both are very well run in my humble opinion.
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Barbara

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #91 - Apr 17^th, 2009 at 10:36am

Is there no end to Natinwide's incompetence? We took our credit cards with them in 2005, separate accounts but also as additional card holders on eachother's accounts. At the same time, we sent letters authorising each to speak upon the other's account, this authorisation was confimed by Nationwide (two telephone calls from the same very helpful lady who had recognised the surname and put the letters together - impressive) and has worked fine - until this morning. I rang to advise of foreign holiday dates, as they require. They took the details for me but then said I could not do this for my husband as I was not authorised. I pointed out I was, had been for nearly four years, had had no previous problems BUT it seems they have lost all record of the authorisation (I suspect because they admitted they now scan letters and the people/organisation now dealing with Nationwide credit cards are not the same as in 2005). Needless to say I was furious, eventually a team leader agreed to add the holiday details to my husband's acount but said he could not discuss any other aspect and we would have to resubmit the authorisations before we could speak on each other's accounts.

I have, of course, made formal complaint to the Chief Executive (again). Now we are faced with having either to record deliver the copy letters so we have confirmation Nationwide received them or make a trip to the branch to hand deliver them for forwarding and request a receipt.

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NGMsGhost

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #92 - Apr 19^th, 2009 at 3:55pm

Barbara wrote on Apr 17^th, 2009 at 10:36am:

Is there no end to Nationwide's incompetence?

Barbara,

Following Nationwide's four hour website and online banking outage in the main part of a Sunday today (while their Online Service Status page maintained that all was well with no apology or admission of the outage when their website returned) I have indeed concluded that there is no end to their corporate incompetence and was moved to launch the following broadside on their IT director and relevant Nationwide director colleagues.

You may perhaps think I have gone too far in accusing the Society's Board Directors of now behaving in an increasingly "Sir Fred Goodwinesque" like manner toward the Members of the Society? Wink

Quote:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Service Status Page Fails To Admit Website Down For 3 To 4 Hours Today
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:36:41 +0100
To: peter.stafford@nationwide.co.uk
CC: graham.beale@nationwide.co.uk, david.rigney@nationwide.co.uk, marlene.mason@nationwide.co.uk, mike.jenkins@nationwide.co.uk, alison.robb@nationwide.co.uk, jeremy.wood@nationwide.co.uk, mark.gibbard@nationwide.co.uk

Dear Mr Stafford,

Along with numerous other recent actions of the so called Nationwide
Building Society (which now behaves more and more like the worst and
most greedy, out of touch, arrogant and contemptuous large bank rather
than the member run building society with good interest rates on all
instant access accounts, no ripoff credit card fees and local geographic
01/02 phone numbers for all branches that first attracted me to it in
2003) I must write to complain in the strongest possible terms about the
outrageous corporate lie now being told by you and your colleagues in
the IT department that your website is "Operating Normally" at
www.nationwide.co.uk/contact_us/service_availability/service_availability.htm
immediately at 3.20pm today after your website had in fact experienced a
total outage for 3 to 4 hours (from 10.30am to 2.30pm or so) in the main
part of a Sunday when many customers were likely to be actively using it.

As one with a wide experience of websites and IT I find that the normal
purpose of a Service Status page on a website is to report on and
explain major service failures both when they happen and for at least
several days afterwards so that those affected by them can find out the
reasons for the failure when normal service is restored. However it
seems that along with the grotesque criminal corporate lie (under the
Consumer Protection Act 1987 - Misleading Price Indications) in which
all Nationwide front line staff are now being schooled by your new
greedy and cynical board directors that this new Sir Fred Goodwinesque
like method of running the Society also prevents it from owning up to a
major technical failure by your department who tries to pretend that
nothing at all has happened.

Perhaps you would care to offer some explanation to your director
colleagues as to why you seem to be wholly unable to specify a website
that is adequately resilient to automatically rollover to a fallback
server when equipment or connections for your main home page website
fail. Surely at least a simple holding page apologising for the failure
and indicating that normal service will be restored soon is to be
expected from a large national financial organisation in 2009 rather
than either a 404 Page Not Found error or Proxy Server error that was
being reported by your website throughout this period today.

I could reach all other websites normally during this time on my
computer and broadband connection so I can assure you that your website
and not my equipment was at fault. This can be confirmed by following
the thread discussing your major website outage today on the
www.moneysavingexpert.com website at
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=20810701&posted=1#post2081...

Perhaps when you have investigated the matter fully you can tell me why
your Service Status page is not being maintained so as to acknowledge
and explain recent service outages properly and/or at all as by
definition when the service is totally offline customers will not be
able to connect to the page to see why the service is currently offline
and can only do so after the service has come back up.

I look forward to receiving your comments on this matter in due course.

Regards,

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« Last Edit: Apr 19^th, 2009 at 3:59pm by NGMsGhost »

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NGMsGhost

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Nationwide Delay ISA Transfer For Full 30 Days
Reply #93 - Apr 19^th, 2009 at 8:49pm

I have just learned from an exceptionally unhelpful and unsympathethic member of Nationwide's telephone banking staff that despite having received my written instruction from NatWest to move my ISAs to them within 8 days of NatWest receiving it that they do not intend to transfer my ISA from Nationwide to NatWest for the full 30 days that the FSA seems to allow them to get away with and meanwhile will be ripping me off by only paying the derisory 0.25% interest rate that my one year fixed rate ISA bond at 6.25% rolled off on to on April 8th.

So while having the bit between my teeth I sent their directors and senior managers the below email also covering (in passing) the issue of the training of their staff to break the law regarding the call cost description (as "local rate") of their new 0845 phone numbers for their branches that have replaced the former 01/02 numbers that they had so carefully hung on to before some incompetent IT director or manager was conned in to going down the 0845 road.

Here is my email:-

Quote:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Abusive 30 Day ISA Transfer Delay to NatWest Amounts To Theft
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:30:06 +0100
To: graham.beale@nationwide.co.uk
CC: peter.stafford@nationwide.co.uk, david.rigney@nationwide.co.uk, marlene.mason@nationwide.co.uk, mike.jenkins@nationwide.co.uk, alison.robb@nationwide.co.uk, jeremy.wood@nationwide.co.uk, mark.gibbard@nationwide.co.uk, richard.searle@nationwide.co.uk, geoffery.howe@nationwide.co.uk, robert.walther@nationwide.co.uk, mark.rennison@nationwide.co.uk, matthew.wyles@nationwide.co.uk, tony.prestedge@nationwide.co.uk, robin.bailey@nationwide.co.uk, liam.coleman@nationwide.co.uk, terry.kaye@nationwide.co.uk, steve.nowell@nationwide.co.uk, maxine.taylor@nationwide.co.uk, stuart.bernau@nationwide.co.uk, bill.tudorjohn@nationwide.co.uk, mark.nicholls@nationwide.co.uk, suzanna.taverne@nationwide.co.uk, derek.ross@nationwide.co.uk, stella.david@nationwide.co.uk, sue.ellen@nationwide.co.uk, michael.jary@nationwide.co.uk, kevin.loosemoore@nationwide.co.uk
References: <49EB36F9.3020306@grenehurst.plus.com>

Dear Mr Beale,

Abusive and Unreasonable 30 Day ISA Transfer Delay to NatWest & Abusive 0.25% ISA Run On Interest Rate Amounts To Theft

Further to my earlier email to your IT director about the utter shambles with the collapse of your website for several hours earlier today (Sunday 19th April 2009) I am now also writing to also complain about the abusive processes, akin to theft, instituted by Nationwide for any customer, like myself, who has come to the end of a Fixed Rate ISA Bond (in my case a one year bond at 6.25% interest) and who is now forced to move it to another financial institution because you do not currently choose to offer an acceptable market rate of ISA interest (eg 3%) to any customer not willing to enter in to another one year fixed rate bond with your Society.

In my view this is quite ridiculous since anyone with a Cash ISA will not de-invest the money unless they have a very good reason indeed for doing so as they will lose that year's tax free Cash ISA wrapper for good. There is therefore no need and no justification at all to force people to take another Fixed rate ISA bond for a fixed term in order for them to get a normal market rate of interest (instead of the abusive 0.5% that you are paying to normal non fixed term ISAs or the even more abusive 0.25% rate paid to fixed rate ISA bond customers who have rolled off the end of the fixed term bond) from the Society.

In my own case I have decided to move all of my nearly £11,000 of cash ISAs from previous years to NatWest, both so I can get a market leading rate of ISA interest (3.5%) and so that I am not locked in to a one year term with significant penalties for early withdrawal (as would be imposed by Nationwide to get just 3% interest) but for reasons that are clearly totally unjustified in an electronic banking age you are currently trying to hang on to my money and pay an abusive 0.25% rate of interest for the maximum 30 days that you think you can get away with from receiving my instruction. Yet I could not give the instruction until the day the one year ISA bond ended on 8th April or I would have suffered a 3 month interest penalty for early withdrawal. So there was no way for me to avoid being rolled off on to a derisory 0.25% interest rate for a month.

To my mind this is quite obscene behaviour on Nationwide's part as you are trying to pay a derisory 0.25% interest rate to customers for a month, even though my ISA form actually reached you from NatWest within 8 days of them receiving it from me. Since any manual administration was therefore completed by your receipt of the paperwork on Thursday 16th April, when it was also logged on your system, then as far as I am concerned the money should have transferred to NatWest forthwith that day electronically with no further delay. I take the dimmest possible view indeed on this behaviour by Nationwide which I feel is totally outrageous and completely inappropriate for a member owned Building Society. I should also add that I should not have to be moving the money away from the Society at all were you still paying a normal market rate of interest on ISAs of 3% and not instead insisting on a 1 year fixed term to get even this rate of interest.

Continued/................

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« Last Edit: Apr 19^th, 2009 at 8:53pm by NGMsGhost »

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NGMsGhost

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #94 - Apr 19^th, 2009 at 8:50pm

Quote:

I feel the policies that are now being pursued by you and your fellow directors with regards to matter such as ISA transfers and the current unreasonably low level of interest on instant access (with no strings) savings accounts are extremely damaging to the previously excellent reputation of the Society that it had taken so many years to establish. Reneging on the previous deal on exchange rate fee free credit and debit cards (so actively marketed by the Society on national television until very recently) and replacing the prized 01/02 local geographic numbers your branches had retained for so long with the hated hidden revenue share 0845 phone numbers (which you also train your staff to break the law on by telling them to describe them as "local rate") are further examples of the increasingly abusive anti customer behaviour by you and your fellow directors and senior executives towards your Members. The same is true of your Society delaying until the very last possible moment the implementation of the new Fastpay BACS payment system for outgoing payments from member accounts. NatWest implemented the same system in full nearly 12 months ago.

You must presumably think your members were born yesterday if you expect them to believe that there is some real manual paperwork trail that actually needs to take 30days to move ISA money to other institutions, rather than simply an old fashioned anti competitive attempt to prevent your members taking their business elsewhere to an institution offering them a better deal. Given the recent extraordinary behaviour of your directors in adversely altering so many of the terms and conditions of so many of your services (including phone numbers and foreign exchange rate levies) against the interests of your Members I can only assume that some of them must be commercial bankers (perhaps even former colleagues of say Sir Fred Goodwin) rather than longstanding building society men or women?

I look forward to your investigation in to why Nationwide is obstructing the swift transfer of my One year Fixed Rate ISA bond with Nationwide to my NatWest E-ISA and also paying a derisory 0.25% interest rate while it does so and to therefore hearing from you further in this regard in due course.

Yours sincerely,

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sherbert

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #95 - Apr 19^th, 2009 at 9:15pm

I transferred a considerable sum to a Nat West Isa from another provider last October. At the beginning of this tax year I went and put in this year's allowance. Three days later I looked on line to see that it had been blocked. Apparantly on enquiring why this happened, all Isas at Nat West get blocked so you can't put any more in the tax year. I had to fill in a lengthly form to unblock it. Money eventually was transferred but have missed over a week's interest. A good little old scam being run by Nat West Cry

When I saw the guy originally he never mentioned any of this and I really can't be bothered to chase the £4 odd interest that I lost, but if they do this to everyone it is a nice little earner going on for them Cry

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« Last Edit: Apr 19^th, 2009 at 9:16pm by sherbert »

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NGMsGhost

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #96 - Apr 19^th, 2009 at 10:01pm

sherbert wrote on Apr 19^th, 2009 at 9:15pm:

I transferred a considerable sum to a Nat West Isa from another provider last October. At the beginning of this tax year I went and put in this year's allowance. Three days later I looked on line to see that it had been blocked. Apparantly on enquiring why this happened, all Isas at Nat West get blocked so you can't put any more in the tax year. I had to fill in a lengthly form to unblock it. Money eventually was transferred but have missed over a week's interest. A good little old scam being run by Nat West Cry

When I saw the guy originally he never mentioned any of this and I really can't be bothered to chase the £4 odd interest that I lost, but if they do this to everyone it is a nice little earner going on for them Cry

But Nationwide's rolling me off from 6.25% fixed rate interest to 0.25% run on interest at the end of the one year fixed term and then taking 30 days to do the ISA transfer to NatWest to get me back to 3.5% is on a bigger scale. My calculation is that I will lose £29 in interest as a result.

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« Last Edit: Apr 19^th, 2009 at 10:09pm by NGMsGhost »

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sherbert

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #97 - Apr 19^th, 2009 at 10:10pm

NGMsGhost wrote on Apr 19^th, 2009 at 10:01pm:

But Nationwide rolling me off from 6.25% fixed rate interest to 0.25% run on interest at the end of the one year fixed term and then taking 30 days to do the ISA transfer to NatWest to get me back to 3.5% is on a bigger scale. My calculation is that I will lose £29 in interest as a result.

Agree yours is worth following up as it is for more money than my Nat West one.

Every year when I take out a cash Isa, it does not matter which provider it is, there is always a problem.

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Barbara

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #98 - Apr 20^th, 2009 at 2:29pm

Well done NGM's Ghost! I agree with every word you have said to Nationwide. Of course, their other gem was to discontinue paying interest on the Flexaccount (in which we had maintained a deposit at the hightest level to get the interest) and I'm sure they never notified us, we only discovered it by chance a month later, this had earned us £80.80 in the preceding year. We did take another Nationwide ISA bond because we didn't want the e-ISA with Nat West and were told we couldn't transfer from another ISA into the branch based ISA paying 3.51%. And, of course, you can no longer pay your bills in Nationwide, only their credit card bill so my husband has to traipse round other banks as well.

Their other recent incompetence (which I forgot last Friday due to the credit card issue) related to my youngest son who still lives at home. Nationwide recently reissued all debit cards some months early all with new debit card numbers; for fairly complex reasons (including an advance payment made on the existing card which he would then need to produce over Easter) my son asked when visiting our branch if he could continue to use his existing card & was told yes, until it expired which would be Sept 09. Last Thursday evening, he tried to withdraw money on the existing card & it was blocked. Having been begged (& being a bit soft), I drove five miles in torrential rain to deliver his new card to him in town which, of course, worked. Another example of Nationwide staff not having a clue about the basics of their job.

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #99 - Apr 20^th, 2009 at 3:31pm

Barbara, as I have mentioned before, why on earth are you and your family still with this outfit? When they took over the Portman B.S. the service deteriated so much that my wife and I took all our savings and Isas out of Nationwide because we were so fed up with their incompetence and appaliing service. What are you waiting for? Huh

To save your self from any more stress, vote with your feet. Wink

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #100 - Apr 20^th, 2009 at 3:44pm

sherbert wrote on Apr 20^th, 2009 at 3:31pm:

Barbara, as I have mentioned before, why on earth are you and your family still with this outfit? When they took over the Portman B.S. the service deteriated so much that my wife and I took all our savings and Isas out of Nationwide because we were so fed up with their incompetence and appaliing service. What are you waiting for?

Sherbert.

I think the point that concerns both me and Barbara is that almost none of the alternatives here are very attractive either. And what we find objectionable is that we have supported the Building Society movement (which we both passionately believe in) but its directors are now behaving as though they are running a commercial bank. We are simply asking for them to fulfil their legal duty by running it again as a building society operated in the best interests of its Members.

I have moved my Nationwide ISAs to NatWest simply to get a decent rate of interest with no penalties for early withdrawal but I do not expect to be delighted with NatWest and I know they only have to pay a decent rate of interest be because of their currently shocking reputation and because the government is subsidising their activities to try to restart the UK economy. Similarly I will be opening an account with Citibank reluctantly because I loathe dealing with Indian call centres but since they pay a better rate of interest on instant access savings (non ISA) than any building society and are fully FSA protected up to £50,000 it is the lesser of two evils. As long as I can operate the account entirely online and not have to speak to the Indians (their Indian call centre is a particularly bad one with no effort at all made to weed out staff who do not speak intelligible English) it should be ok.

I would much rather give my custom to a UK building society but as long as they act abusively by still charging 10% to 17% or so on loans and credit cards but only pay interest at 1 to 2% to depositors I have no choice but to take my business elsewhere.

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sherbert

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #101 - Apr 20^th, 2009 at 4:06pm

NGMsGhost wrote on Apr 20^th, 2009 at 3:44pm:

sherbert wrote on Apr 20^th, 2009 at 3:31pm:

Barbara, as I have mentioned before, why on earth are you and your family still with this outfit? When they took over the Portman B.S. the service deteriated so much that my wife and I took all our savings and Isas out of Nationwide because we were so fed up with their incompetence and appaliing service. What are you waiting for?

Sherbert.

I think the point that concerns both me and Barbara is that almost none of the alternatives here are very attractive either. And what we find objectionable is that we have supported the Building Society movement (which we both passionately believe in) but its directors are now behaving as though they are running a commercial bank. We are simply asking for them to fulfil their legal duty by running it again as a building society operated in the best interests of its Members.

I have moved my Nationwide ISAs to NatWest simply to get a decent rate of interest with no penalties for early withdrawal but I do not expect to be delighted with NatWest and I know they only have to pay a decent rate of interest be because of their currently shocking reputation and because the government is subsidising their activities to try to restart the UK economy. Similarly I will be opening an account with Citibank reluctantly because I loathe dealing with Indian call centres but since they pay a better rate of interest on instant access savings (non ISA) than any building society and are fully FSA protected up to £50,000 it is the lesser of two evils. As long as I can operate the account entirely online and not have to speak to the Indians (their Indian call centre is a particularly bad one with no effort at all made to weed out staff who do not speak intelligible English) it should be ok.

I would much rather give my custom to a UK building society but as long as they act abusively by still charging 10% to 17% or so on loans and credit cards but only pay interest at 1 to 2% to depositors I have no choice but to take my business elsewhere.

Point taken.

Remember if you add to your Nat West Isa next year, refer to my post #95

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #102 - Apr 20^th, 2009 at 4:14pm

sherbert wrote on Apr 20^th, 2009 at 4:06pm:

Remember if you add to your Nat West Isa next year, refer to my post #95

The matter of NatWest not transferring my opening £3,600 in to my E-ISA account as an existing customer they already knew on the day I opened it online (when the online form suggested I was completing the transfer there and then) and their stupid insistence on sending me a paper based form requiring a signature to transfer the money across (when I could in fact transfer the money manually online after two days once the account was opened with a zero balance) for a a so called E-ISA has already been referred to the Chairman's office of the Royal Bank of Scotland group.

Similarly my ISA transfer from Nationwide to the NatWest E-ISA and its quite unjustified slow pace while I am paid a derisory 0.25% interest by Nationwide has been referred to their Chief Executive's office.

If both organisations still foul up despite this then the Financial Services Ombudsman will be my next stop.

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Heinz

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #103 - Apr 20^th, 2009 at 6:49pm

They're all as bad as each other.

I opened a new fixed rate ISA this tax year with Lloyds TSB. Told them I wanted to transfer in 2 previous years' ISAs and they said they'd deal with everything.

The first of those old ISAs, YBS, very efficiently added closing interest (within a day) and then sent a cheque in the post to Lloyds!

They've obviously never heard of electronic banking!

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« Last Edit: Apr 20^th, 2009 at 6:51pm by Heinz »

After years of ignoring govt. guidelines & RIPPING OFF Council Tax payers using 0845 numbers, Essex County Council changed to 0345 numbers on 2 November 2015

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Re: Nationwide Building Society
Reply #104 - Apr 20^th, 2009 at 9:26pm

Heinz wrote on Apr 20^th, 2009 at 6:49pm:

They're all as bad as each other.

I think a few smaller building societies probably offer more personalised service but unfortunately they are probably also more likely to still go bust.

The decision by most institutions (Citibank/Egg excepted) to only offer a reasonable rate of interest on ISAs (with their automatic sticky money tendencies even if they aren't also combined with a term bond too) does seem to suggest that many of them still have huge liquidity problems where they are fearful of any adverse news starting a run on the bank or building society concerned.

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