Nationwide Website

NonGeographicalMan

britishbay wrote: »

Yes, it is down. I tried few times but did not work. May be they are maintaining their site.

No the site is clearly broken with no adequate fallback rollover arrangements in place.

Large organisations do not take a site offline without notice in the main part of the day for many hours. They only do that at 3am or 4am if they have an urgent problem.

adecor

It's working for me now

NonGeographicalMan

adecor wrote: »

It's working for me now

That's called coming back online.

Their scheduled web maintenance says only:-

Service availability




Internet Banking
Historic statements for current and savings accounts will be unavailable on Mon 20 April between approximately 00:01 and 02:00 - this is due to essential maintenance work.
We apologise for any inconvenience this will cause.

See www.nationwide.co.uk/contact_us/service_availability/service_availability.htm

Anyhow the website just seems to have broken down again now and is no longer appearing.

adecor

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

Anyhow the website just seems to have broken down again now and is no longer appearing.

I've just completed some payments and it worked fine via www.nationwide.co.uk

NonGeographicalMan

adecor wrote: »

I've just completed some payments and it worked fine via www.nationwide.co.uk

Well bully for you.

Surely you don't think the rest of us were making up the fact that it was down for several hours and that it is still not appearing reliably at the present time, even though it had made a partial reappearance in the last few minutes.

Incredibly their Service Status page currently shows:-

Internet Site
Operating Normally

:eek::mad:

Its at times like this that I really regret this website not having a No Thanks button for unhelpful posts such as your own.

ctdctd

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

Well bully for you.


Its at times like this that I really regret this website not having a No Thanks button for unhelpful posts such as your own.

Calm down Dear, it's only a website;)

Adecor, thanks for letting us know it's working again:T

adecor

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

Well bully for you.

Surely you don't think the rest of us were making up the fact that it was down for several hours and that it is still not appearing reliably at the present time, even though it had made a partial reappearance in the last few minutes.

Incredibly their Service Status page currently shows:-
:eek::mad:

Its at times like this that I really regret this website not having a No Thanks button for unhelpful posts such as your own.

I ALSO had a problem with not being able to access and was merely stating that for me it was now working and thought I'd share it with everyone in the hope that it was operational for all.

I really don't understand why you have to be so nasty.

withnell

Maybe it was down while they removed all references to paying interest on their savings accounts...not that it's too much work, they practically have already!

NonGeographicalMan

withnell wrote: »

Maybe it was down while they removed all references to paying interest on their savings accounts...not that it's too much work, they practically have already!

Indeed so. My one year fixed rate bond ISA at 6.25% has just rolled off on to an 0.25% rate a few days ago. A clear cut case of legalised theft on their part if ever there was one.:eek::mad:

Not to mention Nationwide now having replaced all their normal geographic 01/02 phone numbers for their branches that they had retained for so many years with ripoff 0845 numbers. Just when there is no excuse as normal rate 03 numbers are now available if they need high tech call stats or call re-routing features.

And they are about the last major financial institution left in the UK to still not have properly implemented the FastPay same day payment system on outgoing BACS transfers. Not to mention going back on their word on exchange rate fee free Visa credit cards after extensive high profile television advertising to encourage customers to take them out solely due to this facility.

You may therefore perhaps appreciate the contents of the below email I have just sent them about their website incompetence today and referring to their new management as being "Sir Fred Goodwinesque" in their complete disregard of the interests of the Society's Members who are supposed to own them.

---

Original Message

---

Subject: Service Status Page Fails To Admit Website Down For 3 To 4 Hours
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:36:41 +0100From:
Reply-To:
To: [EMAIL="peter.stafford@nationwide.co.ukCC"]peter.stafford@nationwide.co.ukCC[/EMAIL]: [EMAIL="graham.beale@nationwide.co.uk"]graham.beale@nationwide.co.uk[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="david.rigney@nationwide.co.uk"]david.rigney@nationwide.co.uk[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="marlene.mason@nationwide.co.uk"]marlene.mason@nationwide.co.uk[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="mike.jenkins@nationwide.co.uk"]mike.jenkins@nationwide.co.uk[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="alison.robb@nationwide.co.uk"]alison.robb@nationwide.co.uk[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="jeremy.wood@nationwide.co.uk"]jeremy.wood@nationwide.co.uk[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="mark.gibbard@nationwide.co.uk"]mark.gibbard@nationwide.co.uk[/EMAIL]

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#post20810701

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,