Nationwide letter

Hazzanet

BarclaysManager wrote: »

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.

I agree to a certain extent. The fundamental underlying principle of the group is to generate a profit for its members, however when the organisation is a mutual, such as Nationwide, you need to balance profit for members vs a 'decent' level of service.

It's also a two edged sword here - if the people who come in to take £20 out of their account don't approach the counter any more, how are Nationwide's staff supposed to sell sell sell?

I'd prefer a decent level of service over a huge profit any day... indeed NPBS is this way:

"our approach is to encourage customers who want to use to branches to have face to face contact with our cashiers"

( http://www.npbs.co.uk/about-us/ask-matthew-qa.asp#32 )

Sadly, although I am a member of this mutual, their branch network doesn't stretch to my area so I deal with them remotely (as I do with Nationwide most of the time). I do, however feel that we should all have the opportunity to go into the branch to make a transaction should we wish to.

I may be a bit old fashioned - I remember the days of when I was a student, and I could call Jo, my account manager at the Lloyd's Bank to increase the overdraft. Now I'm lucky if I get the same person twice with any of the financial institutions I deal with.

Kavanne

Hazzanet wrote: »

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

Everyone except nationwide!! I've used Natwest, RBS, Halifax, American Express and Standard Life.

LittleVoice

Squirreler wrote: »

It's people paying in one coin that have caused these measures!

How many instances are there of someone paying in £1 or 20p? I can't believe that there can be more than one a day in a branch.

Will they start saying they can't accept more than, say, 30 notes at one time because that takes up too much time in processing?

paulboy83

I've had the coin problem with Nationwide a few years back, I had £95 in notes and wanted to put the extra £5 in coins to round it up to £100. They refused to accept the coins as they weren't in a bag. On querying this later they told me that if I'd put the money in a bag they would have accepted it, which still strikes me as very strange as i didnt have enough to make a full bags worth!

I'm still with nationwide and this change won't stop me staying with them as I rarely use the counter service, as the machine is quicker and saves me the hard sell.......

Any

As I work full time, I don't go into branch. I had to go once to show them my wedding certificate and a new signature (as a female I changed my surname) and I was waiting long long queue of people.
But I love the fact that you don't have to wait queue to deposit a cheque - you can do that at ATM - and I would certainly not wait a queue to deposit a cash - I would put a £10 note into the ATM.
As occassionaly you have to go in and show them things like wedding certificates or payslips when applying for mortgage or loan and I work full time so do it in a lunch hour would be great, I agree that there needs to be done something to reduce the queues.
I also like their internet banking and I do everything on the internet banking. I love the fact that I can go abroad and withdraw foreing currency from any ATM without having to faff around to find Exchange places - and trust me for example in Prague you have to compare them to get the best rate - then compare the charges and then go back to the best place to change your money.
So the fact that I cannot get less then £30 behind the counter doesn't bother me - as I don't need any money from the counter. The fact that they are selling (which I truly hate) doesn't bother me either, as I use internet banking.

DeathCabb

Madjock wrote: »

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

Halifax stopped Easycash customers withdrawing less than £300 from their counters many moons ago, and we moved our childrens savings accounts from Halifax over to Nationwide last year because of trouble paying in loose change. It seems to me all banks will eventually adopt similiar behaviour.

Milarky

BarclaysManager wrote: »

Except it's not really the sensible solution.

If they bring in extra cashiers to cover busy periods, what do those cashier then do during quiet periods?

Lots of things. For a start they could ensure the phone gets picked up when it starts to ring. Optionally, they could put their heads together and turn the phone ringer off - so it doesn't appear to the queues in the branch that they aren't doing anything when that phone rings... Besides that trivial example, however, I've noticed that cashiers (perhaps it's the same with all banks) seem to be able to do less and less these days - other than the money part. Once upon a time these people would have be 'mutli-skilled' - and only too willing to help. But their organisation now seems to 'warehouse' staff at call centres and admin centres. That adds delay to any processing and inconvenience to customers. In morale terms too, the average Nationwide employee can't be as happy with the work they do as they would have been 10 years ago say.

On top of that, you're forgetting the extra costs, behind the scenes: more training,

All organisations live or die by the quality (or numptiness) or their staff. This is an area where NW seems to have gone backwards judging by the general levels of knowledge and awareness displayed in branches - and particularly over the phone. It's also a bug bear of mine that NW doesn't allow its complaint sections to bear that title and must go by the confusing title of 'Member Services'. (George Orwell had something to say about 'rebranding')

The truly sensible option is to manage things properly.

Hear hear. I would start at the top by sacking Graham Beale. He seems to have presided over organisational decay and nothing else since he took over.

And that's why we, as banks, provide internet banking

Nationwide still not pulling its way there by failing to link up to faster payments. Faster payments allow people to avoid visits to branches in person. Merely having interenet banking is not good enough these days

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.

Having used it frequently because it gets very little attention from the queue of people in the branch, the ATM acutually takes longer to count money recieved than a casher - and cashiers are not particularly quick! The ATM is about a year old but has developed a 'greasy wheel' on the card slot - probably due to cheap sourcing and poorly engineered design. But we are stuck with it - because they've spent the money now.

Most of the people queueing in a bank could probably use these features

Maybe, but in the redesign they took out that third cashier position away - it's not as if they actually open two positions much anyway despite having queues all day. As usual, 'good intentions' has gone awry and we have got to the ridiculous stage of NW writing to its customers advising them that it can no longer provider a full coutner service (re. the minimum withdrawals) which just smacks of idiocy and not thinking anything through anymore

old people insist on doing things the old ways.

They would appear to be the ones with their marbles left....

Slapps

I have a flex account with no debit card and this will not stop me from getting say £15 out if I need to as I will just take out the £30 that they now say we can take out over the counter and then put £15 straight back in the account. I know this will mean extra work for the staff and that I will be at the counter twice as long but I don't think Nationwide thought this through very well lol
P.S Sorry to all staff that work for Nationwide