Nationwide letter

Hazzanet

Hmmm, this is irritating: They have, by far, the best internet banking interface that I have used, and I like the fact that I can use my debit/credit card abroad with no fees, but I must say that this combined with the threat of not accepting odd coins is making me review what I think of them.

Kavanne

Gosh, Hazza, you ain't used many internet banking interfaces have you!!

Hazzanet

Kavanne wrote: »

Gosh, Hazza, you ain't used many internet banking interfaces have you!!

Nationwide, Norwich and Peterborough, Smile, Co-op, Barclays, NatWest, Yorkshire BS, HSBC, Halifax, LloydsTSB, Tesco PFS, Egg, Citibank to name but a few.

Nationwide, IMO wins against all of em.

FluffyFiFi

I work for Nationwide and find the job getting worse and worse. We are targetted on selling products to our customers and are told we have to engage in conversations with our customers to ascertain whether they would want a mortgage, loan, pension, life insurance etc. If we do not make enough sales (although they call it points) we do not get our bonus.

The other issue regarding the £30 limit is what do we do when someone who has £9.95 in their account wants to withdraw that amount to get food or nappies and we say no, sorry you can't do it you have to go to the machine. They would not have enough in their account to withdraw £10 which is the minimum and we would not be allowed to take in the 5p to make the amount up. How stupid is this.

Lots of staff are very unhappy and are looking at changing jobs.

Kavanne

The thing that annoyed me about Nationwide online was when I only had a credit card with them it still displayed on the far right hand side of the page. Was very confusing, I thought it was my browser until I opened a flex account!!

Kavanne

FluffyFiFi wrote: »

I work for Nationwide and find the job getting worse and worse. We are targetted on selling products to our customers and are told we have to engage in conversations with our customers to ascertain whether they would want a mortgage, loan, pension, life insurance etc. If we do not make enough sales (although they call it points) we do not get our bonus.

Welcome to the world of retail banking. That is my job description in a nutshell

Hazzanet

Kavanne wrote: »

The thing that annoyed me about Nationwide online was when I only had a credit card with them it still displayed on the far right hand side of the page. Was very confusing, I thought it was my browser until I opened a flex account!!

So whose internet banking interface do you think is the better, out of interest?

FluffyFiFi

Kavanne wrote: »

Welcome to the world of retail banking. That is my job description in a nutshell

Nationwide was always keen to point out they are a building society without any shareholders and care about their customers. Suddenly it's sell, sell, sell.

We are supposed to be proud to be different.

Extant

Hazzanet wrote: »

Problem: People are P'd off with having to wait in queues at the counter.
Sensible Solution: Give the customers the service they deserve by having more cashiers serving at busy times and/or having more counter positions installed.

Except it's not really the sensible solution. Like it or not, Nationwide is a business and exists primarily to create profit, not to provide a service. If you disagree with me, please examine the holdings of the Nationwide group and their primary purposes - such as the investment, commercial mortgages and insurance holdings.

If they bring in extra cashiers to cover busy periods, what do those cashier then do during quiet periods? Nothing. That isn't good staffing, that is a waste of money, which in turn drives profits down, which in turn (in Nationwide's sense, at least) would drive down those nice savings rates that everyone seems to love.

It's the exact same thing with adding extra tills: you have to pay for them to be installed, and then for a cashier to sit on them. Even more cost. On top of that, you're forgetting the extra costs, behind the scenes: more training, higher insurance costs, as you now have to insure all of the extra cash that till may hold.

The truly sensible option is to manage things properly. Some queues just can't be handled realistically. Again, like it or not, but in some places, queueing is just a reality of life.

And that's why we, as banks, provide internet banking and so forth to try and eliminate the queues. You have debit cards so you can withdraw cash, internet banking so you can pay your bills, and usually some sort of quick deposit feature to deposit money. Most of the people queueing in a bank could probably use these features and the queue would be virtually gone, but people - particularly old people - insist on doing things the old ways.

FluffyFiFi wrote: »

Nationwide was always keen to point out they are a building society without any shareholders and care about their customers. Suddenly it's sell, sell, sell.

We are supposed to be proud to be different.

Do you guys still have a set of raid keys?

P.S. - I loved working in retail banking. I still do, but I'm now in area management, so I rarely get to spend any time in a branch and see the ins and outs of day to day banking. I do miss it a lot though.

Madjock

Yes it's the principle of the thing. I'm very lucky to be a lot better off financially than I have been but I haven't forgotten how we struggled during and for a long time after our bankruptcy, and I would sometimes have to queue at the counter to withdraw my last few pounds from the account.

Any recommendations for a new account anyway, what is Halifax like?