Why don't they let us view our internet account?

pepsi_z_2

We had a Nationwide account and a good relationship with them for many (circa 20+) years. Just over a year ago, because we were moving to Central Africa, we notified them of this and our new mailing address about three times (this is my sisters house in UK, where we were also staying until our departure). For the next 3 or 4 months, they still kept sending our statements and mail to our old address. Because of this, before we left, we opted to not receive statements by post.

For a while we had access to the internet so were able to keep track of our account. Then we moved to our current residence which is in a rural area and, as we didn’t have internet, were unable to access our account for a while. We were not too worried as we had (early retirement) pensions going into the account which covered the few DD outgoings and expected to have internet access in the near future. Although unfortunately it took a bit longer than we expected.

In January 2007 they sent a letter stating that we should contact them urgently by phone, as we had not responded to their previous two letters, and that they may take court and bankruptcy action against us. As we had withdrawn cash from the account on some occasions, we assumed that we may have miscalculated the exchange rate but, as we also know at least four people who have had their accounts attacked, we wanted to check. However, we sent some funds through and arranged to remit further cash. We wrote to them and also phoned our branch to explain that funds were on their way and ask for details of the overdraft. The lady we spoke to at our local branch said the account had gone to their debt section, but that she would email them to take no further action, and gave us the contact number of our account manager.

It took several attempts to get through to him, but when we did, we explained that the January letter was the first we knew about the problem, also that we were arranging funds to clear the amount. We also queried the account being with the debt section as the amount owed was much less than our overdraft facility. However, the account manager said that because we had gone £100 over our overdraft at some stage, they had removed the overdraft facility and that as soon as the account was clear they would be closing it. The overdraft was now around £2000. He said they were not putting bank charges on - we now think that this was because our pensions were still going in but they had stopped paying the outgoings (we didn’t know about the bank charges reclaims at that time).

The two letters they referred to were never received by us, in fact this was the first correspondence we’d had from them in over a year. They didn’t tell us that they had removed our overdraft facility, and no, we didn’t even receive a letter about the laptop theft - first we knew about it was reading this site last week. (Where any other correspondence had been sent to we know not, but they only seem to have discovered our UK mailing address from their files in January when things were critical).

In February our radio internet was installed, and we tried to access our account to see what had gone wrong, but the account wasn’t displaying on the screen. We emailed Nationwide (through their website, also on which there were no mails from them beyond 30th December 2005 - surely they could have posted something there?) to ask for statements, but they mailed back and said that, as we had internet access and could get the last 27 months statements downloaded, that is what we should do. However if we wanted ‘duplicate’ statements we should contact them again and it would cost £5.00 per statement. About the same time, we had filled in their ‘lost account’ form, but the reply said our account had a marker on it which prevented it from showing on the internet and that we should contact our local branch. As mentioned above, we had done this in the first place.

We feel we are running around in circles, and that there is no point in calling the account manager again as, when we spoke to him, we found him arrogant and inflexible. We’ve changed our pensions to go into another bank account as we have a few commitments to meet, but we still need to find out what went wrong in this account. (We have written to and/or phoned those recipients of the outgoing commitments to change bank details). This morning we received a letter from a debt collection agency (via our UK mailing address) wanting to ‘confirm our whereabouts in order for business correspondence to be forwarded’. We assume Nationwide are fulfilling their threats.

We recently visited your site and, reading your article think bank charges had probably been levied due to the £100 'excess' and this had exacerbated the problem. Anyway we’ve sent the first letter regarding bank charges.
I don’t know why Nationwide won’t allow us to view our account on the screen, all we could do is look at it and, if we agree with the outgoings, we can clear the debt. At the moment all I can see is that they are saying we owe them money without allowing us access to the details and, living in the middle of Africa, we can’t just pop into our local branch to sort it out.

We would appreciate any constructive ideas or information on what we could do next?

Voyager2002

I think you should invoke their complaints procedure: something that you can probably do over the internet. It does seem that they were negligent in failing to ensure that correspondence was sent to the address that you had given them, and a range of problems have resulted from this.

pepsi_z_2

Thank you Voyager2002, that really never occurred to us. These bombshells, when they're not expected, send you into panic mode, and we've been busy realising some of our assets to pay the overdraft off, and sort out our other bank account for payment of DD's. We'll go onto their website and see if there is an option for complaints over the internet.

chica_fi

If the account's been passed to the collections department that might be why it's not displaying on the internet - sometimes a 'bad' account is 'written off' to collections and thus it's not a normal account on branch / bank systems. But aye, go through complaints procedures and you should find charges are miraculously refunded...

thumshie

I can't recall which, but i know some of the banks filter traffic from foreign countries refusing online access - to limit fraud/hacking. This may be why you can't see your account, as your IP will be showing it comes from outside the UK.

pepsi_z_2

It a thought that they may have changed their policy, but we were able to view our account from out here for some months when we were first here. It's only since we've come back online and have a problem with the account, that we can't view it.

pepsi_z_2

The thread that this is in reply to has disappeared! It was a suggestion that when we sort the account we give someone limited power of attorney in UK to keep a check on things

When my sister asked them about that around a year ago (forgotten what we needed her to do, but we had left power of attorney available for her with our solicitor), she was told that if she invoked power of attorney, then we would never be able to access the account in our own right again.

Also worried that if she invoked it now (as they will close it when its sorted anyway), then she may become liable for the remaining overdraft.

pepsi_z_2

We mailed our complaint (they do offer that as one of their subject options), giving all the details as above, and this was their reply:

Dear

Thank you for your message of 24 April 2007.

Your account is not viewable because an indicator was applied on your account as mail has been returned and a no withdrawals indicator has been applied due to you being over your overdraft limit.

Unfortunately as we did not put the indicators on, you will have to contact your account holding branch at ******* on ******** Manager- ******* and they will help you further as we are unable to help you with this query.

I understand the frustration you must be going through and I apologise for any inconvenience caused to you.

Regards,

<writers name removed>
Online Banking
Member Account Servicing, NH

https://www.nationwide.co.uk
Nationwide. Proud to be different

we'll try again .......