Who is the second worst?

Chrisblue1962

Nationwide...how long have you got???:mad:

Nationwide - a once proud mutual organisation that now a grasping greedy bank in all but legal status, which has overpaid senior executives and has steadily year on year reduced the "perks" and quality of it's products . It's now happier to spend a fortune on TV ad campaigns with silly comedy-like staff featuring in it than genuinely serve it's members.

Personal gripe: This is the organisation that issued me with a CCJ for £2900.00 despite being on a DMP withh CCCS which I was paying and was up to date !!! :mad:

If Nationwide went bust tomorrow I'd dance on their grave!!!

alanq

I haven't had any contact with Nationwide in the last few years other than self-service online so things may have changed very recently but my experiences over 10 years+...

Since the merger with the Portman more often than not there are queues to the door in my local branch. Immediately after the merger there were even bigger queues while passbooks were converted.

I left an application for a fixed term account in branch and was told to expect it in the post in a week or so. It didn't arrive after 2 weeks so I returned to branch and was told the application had not yet been processed and they would ensure it was processed immediately. Another week passed. I returned to the branch yet again. I was informed that I shouldn't have been told that it would be processed immediately there is a big pile of applications to work through! So not an oversight but a work overload and bad communications. The certificate arrived about one month after application. If told it would take a month I would not have been bothered. If told it will take a week I am not going to wait a month before checking if it has been lost in the post.

Year after year I transferred funds from bonus bearing accounts into fixed term accounts. The Ts&Cs said such transfers could be done without loss of interest or bonus. I confirmed this when making the transactions. At the end of each year I had to complain and have the lost bonus reinstated.

Nationwide made a £5000 monthly standing order payment instead of £500. (Before I used online banking to set up my own standing orders).

Questions and complaints submitted via online banking secure messages have very long target times for response and they fail to meet even those. A complaint about these missed targets got a response outside its target time!

I sent fixed term account renewal instructions sent to Nationwide HQ in the post in good time and an acknowledgement slip was returned. Come the renewal date a letter arrived "As we have not received any instructions..."

The online banking system is good and as long as one can do things for oneself things are great. In my experience the problems occur when staff intervention is required. As can be seen above most of the problems did not related to my Flexaccount so if I had only a Flexaccount I would have been a very satisfied customer.

Gromitt

Never visited a Nationwide branch, so I don't know what they are like.

However, I do have a FlexAccount:
I hate the fact the default statement is "Mini statement" which gives practically no information at all. I always have to click again to get the full statement, but the full statement seems to take days to update, even for simple things like deposits and withdrawals. I noticed my account balance was higher than expected one day, Mini statement showed a deposit for the amount, but I had to wait 2 days to find out it was an interest payment from a MySave account!

Good point: I accidentally went overdrawn for about 3 days and was charged in total about £50. Nice of them I thought. They even said they would refund the interest at the end of the month, but they seemingly forgot to do it. Didn't bother asking them as it was only about 8p, so nothing to complain about. I was happy with the charges refund.

Nationwide CC - I ended up closing this after getting fedup complaining. Typically from them charging me £12(+interest) even though I had a DD instruction with them. The first time they "lost the paperwork", the second they confirmed it was setup and that everything was fine and then charged me for a late payment fee, another they gave me another £12 charge because the DD had 'expired' (???). Got all the charges back and closed the account. Talking on the phone to them was completely useless - no interest in solving the problem, just wanted to know when they were going to be paid, so had to do everything using secure messages.

Milarky

A controversial vote here for Co-op Bank. This is based on the absurd claim that they are 'ethical' but that doesn't translate into their being any good. A trivial complaint is that the website looks like it was designed 10 years ago. The current £200 offer for tarts could presumably have been split with their existing 'valued' customers but that's not a priority for them it seems. They market numpty 'loyalty' schemes that pay out a pittance and the trick is to inflate the cost of everything up-front like a clothes catalogue. As I see it they are trying to buy up influence and scale up - they are certainly buying the hight street - in classic predatory behaviour preceding anti-competitive price ramping.

mattcanary

Barclays dealt very efficiently with fraudulent transactions made out of my current account with them.

They do have fairly long queues in one of their branches that I go to though.

chambta

pauljoecoe wrote: »

I rang First Direct yesterday. One easy to find number. No menus. The phone was answered within one ring and the lady who answered dealt with my query immediatly. She also spoke good English (albeit with a northern twang) Wish more companies were like this. Phone/internet companies could learn a thing or two.

And this is an issue?

Bloomberg

:money:

ses6jwg wrote: »

Barclays take the double whammy of providing poor customer service and a p!ss poor product range IMHO

Poor product range? What do Barclays not offer that other banks do?

Whatever you may think of their product range their Additions account offers fantastic value. I have an Additions account just for the benefits. I struggle to see how Barclays although not the best bank can be rated below the Nationwide.

callum9999

Milarky wrote: »

A controversial vote here for Co-op Bank. This is based on the absurd claim that they are 'ethical' but that doesn't translate into their being any good. A trivial complaint is that the website looks like it was designed 10 years ago. The current £200 offer for tarts could presumably have been split with their existing 'valued' customers but that's not a priority for them it seems. They market numpty 'loyalty' schemes that pay out a pittance and the trick is to inflate the cost of everything up-front like a clothes catalogue. As I see it they are trying to buy up influence and scale up - they are certainly buying the hight street - in classic predatory behaviour preceding anti-competitive price ramping.

Why is the claim "absurd"? Because their ethics don't exactly match yours?

I do agree I hate their internet banking. Yes the recent new customer offer could have been split among existing customers but how would that have attracted significant numbers of new customers? They have calculated that they will earn more in the long run from those new customers than they pay out in a joining incentive, ergo it's good practise for the bank. Absolutely nothing to do with rewarding new customers while secretly despising the old ones...

And as to the others moaning Nationwide are the worst because they withdraw perks - how ridiculous! So because their current account dropped from being amazing to being average, they therefore are the worst bank/BS? Worse than the ones that offer less even now, and have never offered more?

ses6jwg

Bloomberg wrote: »

:money:


Poor product range? What do Barclays not offer that other banks do?

Whatever you may think of their product range their Additions account offers fantastic value. I have an Additions account just for the benefits. I struggle to see how Barclays although not the best bank can be rated below the Nationwide.

Their current accounts and credit cards are OK.

The Barclays savings range is dire, with the exception of the "monthly savings" account, which is "OK".

System

My vote is also for Nationwide.

Silly gimmick of basic travel insurance bundled with Flexaccount. If such basic insurance is all you need, it's available cheaply elsewhere.

Lately, silly 'rewards' gimmick with credit card, bad deal compared with cashback eg from CapitalOne.

Flexaccounts can't send or receive SEPA Credit Transfers, only slow expensive 'SWIFT'. Moreover, Nationwide unnecessarily complicate their instructions for receiving 'SWIFT' transfers. OK, only affects a minority of customers, but I imagine a significant minority, because Nationwide used to be good for using cards abroad.

They use rip-off 0845 numbers. OK, not alone in that, but on their letterhead they fraudulently and pig-ignorantly describe them as 'local rate'.

I actually like the Co-op's internet banking! Quick to load, nice retro look, does what I need.