Nationwide warning

moola_3

Had been using the Nationwide credit card for some years and making full use of their 'paperless' option in conjunction with their online banking. This worked very well up until recently, with an email delivered monthly to advise that the new statement was available to view on line, PDFs of all previous statements were also available to view or download. However, my card was recently 'skimmed' and two attempts at fraudulent use were detected by Nationwide. They immediately issued me with a replacement card with a new number. However, all statements and transactions (incuding recent ones on an as yet unsettled bill) are no longer available to view on line. Only transactions made on the new card are available online. It was a battle to get any sense from Nationwide as to why this was. I was initially told that there was a problem with some accounts that was being sorted out, but only after a number of calls to the head office was I eventually told that this was a design feature of their system and there were no plans to change the system. This has left me rather irritated as I had begun to trust the paperless system which was convenient. I have now lost all my statements since I started using online banking. Nationwide have offered me printouts and I suppose I had known of this issue I would have saved the PDFs. Some may say 'why do you need the old statements, you are just being anal about it' and maybe they are right. But I have always found that, however infrequently access to old banking documents is required, on the odd occasion that a previous transaction needs some investigation it is essential to have all old statements, at least for the last year. In my case, Nationwide were quite happy to try to persuade me to pay my credit card bill without sight of a statement - even after recent attempted fraud. I am now dispensing with my Nationwide accounts and card as I feel they have messed me about. As I understand it (from their CEO's office) you will be given a new credit card number in any event where your card has been lost or stolen or a fraud attempt has been detected. At that point you will lose all online access to previous transaction history. They treat the whole issue of customer records rather casually, but I am sure they make sure not to lose any data themselves. The purpose of online/paperless banking is surely to improve efficiency, but in my case I am back to handling paperwork again. I was told that this was necessary as my account had been closed, but my account with Nationwide was unchanged, only my card number. In time, wrinkles like this may well get sorted out, but at the moment it is well to know not to over-rely on any bank continuing to make your account records available to you in all circumstances. For anyone particular about record-keeping, you may need to consider reguarly saving statements locally if you do not already do so. At present it seems a bit of an uphill struggle to confidently switch over completely to paperless/online banking. If you use a Nationwide credit card with paperless billing, be prepared to lose all your records if your card has to be replaced for any reason other than expiry or damage.

normanmark

http://www.buzzin.net/english/paras.htm

moola_3

normanmark wrote: »

http://www.buzzin.net/english/paras.htm

Yes, I am familiar with the concept of paragraphs! On this post, for some reason, every attempt at inserting line breaks, including subsequent editing, was thwarted by the vBulletin system which repeatly removed them, not exactly sure why.