MSE News: Nationwide revamps Flexaccount with travel insurance

Dave_C_2

Got my letter, which said that as we us the joint Flex account as our main account we do qualify for free insurance.

Phoned up with a couple of queries:
Good news - It's a joint account so Me and Wife are both covered
Bad news - we don't deposit more than £750 a month from external sources so don't qualify after all.
After being made redundant we are living on pension credit and redundancy payments. Even though we transfer enough money monthly from the Nationwide E-savings account to qualify this doesn't count!

In other words saving with somebody else and transferring in is OK, but not saving with Nationwide! Apparently others have also complained about this crazy situation. Whether they will change anything remains to be seen.

As others have already said it's not a very good insurance policy, so we are not bothering:
No cover at all for companies going bust.
No cover if airline strikes etc are announced before you leave your house on the day of travel. This could make an interesting court case!
No cover for motorway delays.
Etc.

Poor show from Nationwide

Dave

malc_b

apt wrote: »

If you want to keep an account with Nationwide to vote against the board, which I will certainly be doing, you need a balance of at least £100 to have a vote.

Is that in any account (e.g. savings, ISA) or does it have to be in current account?

EarthBoy

£100 in any savings account will qualify for voting rights. It doesn't have to be in a FlexAccount.

interbear

Cranberryberry wrote: »

I can't seem to find any confirmation as to whether the Travel Insurance will just cover account holders (which I would guess) or 'families' for Joint Accounts.... if not this does sound like time to look elsewhere (for me)

I just got the letter from NW yesterday about this - the insurance covers the named people on the account, has to be upgraded to cover other family members. At a cost no doubt.

Absolutely no use to me at all - have family travel insurance via my direct line home insurance.

The free foreign transactions (Europe) and cash withdrawals were a major benefit to me, frankly the only reason I opened a joint account with NW as we travel to France regularly.

Will now look elsewhere. Bad move NW.

allanmc

What a shame.

I have had a FlexAccount since the mid 80's and it has done everything I've needed it to. It has, until recently, paid reasonable interest rates and the charges were clear and reasonable. The foreign transactions were the icing on the cake. Nothing fancy, just an honest account and noticeably "different" from the others.

Now, it looks like the bean counters have succeeded in confusing things and reducing the value. I don't want a built in travel insurance that doesn't seem to do what I need! I want a decent, honest, current account from a company that doesn't seem to be trying to shaft me at every opportunity.

Previous experience with most of the other current "Best Buys" will make me think very seriously before considering any of them. It's very disappointing when you are reduced to having to chose the best of a bad bunch.

It will be interesting to see how successful they will be, now they are almost identical to the competition.

What a shame!

Olipro

Dave_C wrote: »

Poor show from Nationwide

Dave

Get an account from a bank that offers faster payments (say... NatWest)

transfer £750 from your flex account to your NatWest, it'll reach it instantly.

login to NatWest, transfer the £750 back, bingo, you qualify.

if you're lazy, you could just setup a standing order between the two accounts, but if you do that, it would be prudent to either ensure there's always £750 sat in the NatWest or schedule the transfer out of NatWest for the following day.