Natwest Customer Service

AppleMatt

Hi all

I don't remember ever having to ring Natwest for anything before, but I just gave them a bell to see if they are doing contactless debit cards for current accounts.

I've come away very miffed - the very short, no pleasantries man that answered had no idea what a contactless card was! How can staff working for a bank have no idea of a service that is so widespread?

He had a vague memory of a Barclays advert, and suggested I applied for a Barclaycard :rotfl:

I hate to moan - I'm just confused as to how a front-line bank employee has never heard of contactless cards :rotfl:

So I ask our experts here.. do Natwest offer contactless cards on current accounts? I do have the online card, if that makes a difference.

Thanks!

jen245

Yes they do, i have one. I had the same problem when i rang to enquire about getting one, the woman i spoke to put me through to credit cards! Try ringing again, the second time i rang, the person i spoke to knew straight away what i was talking about and put the order through, and the card arrived a few days later.

Gromitt

Not only do they provide them, they have a website dedicated to them:

http://www.natwest.com/microsites/personal/contactless/index.html

they also have touchpay (pay with your phone)

http://www.natwest.com/personal/mobile-phone-banking/g1/touch-pay.ashx

stclair

Contactless cards are available to purple/offline debit card holders.

spingoblin

stclair wrote: »

Contactless cards are available to purple/offline debit card holders.

is there any particular reason why they restrict contactless to purple cards only?

i ask because i have an orange cash prepaid (online) mastercard that is also contactless, you can only spend what you have on the card and it obviously must be a full authorisation card but nevertheless it still has the contactless feature.

surely it is not beyond the wit of natwest to enable contactless on its own full authorisation (blue) debit cards?

stclair

spingoblin wrote: »

is there any particular reason why they restrict contactless to purple cards only?

i ask because i have an orange cash prepaid (online) mastercard that is also contactless, you can only spend what you have on the card and it obviously must be a full authorisation card but nevertheless it still has the contactless feature.

surely it is not beyond the wit of natwest to enable contactless on its own full authorisation (blue) debit cards?

Im not sure to be honest, however they need to step up their game.

As the London Bus network went contactless this week then itll be the underground next.

The RBSG will be left at the starting line at this rate if they do not get themselves into gear.

rb10

It costs the banks more to issue contactless cards than a normal card - this is why most are dragging their heels.

Natwest are well known for their poor customer service - hence why they brought out their 'Customer Charter', in an effort to drive it upwards a little.

Hooloovoo

Gromitt wrote: »

they also have touchpay (pay with your phone)

http://www.natwest.com/personal/mobile-phone-banking/g1/touch-pay.ashx

... which requires a dumb case for an iPhone since it doesn't support NFC, as opposed to them designing an app for one of the many market dominating Android phones that are NFC ready.

Beggars belief the management decisions made by many companies.

Gromitt

Hooloovoo wrote: »

Beggars belief the management decisions made by many companies.

To be honest though, trying to write an application that works on every Android phone is a complete nightmare. Their are so many makes and models to try with and if you don't have them all, you can have customers complaining it doesn't work with their specific handset. Far easier to develop for iPhone. Do 99% of the code using the simulator and then buy a iPhone 4 and 5 for real world testing. Apple will do further testing and let you know the results.

Google on the other hand just take whatever you sent to them and throw it up on the store, then you get negative feedback from people who's phone it doesn't work on and you have to buy that specific phone (with possibly multiple different versions of the OS) to make it work.

Hooloovoo

Gromitt wrote: »

To be honest though, trying to write an application that works on every Android phone is a complete nightmare. Their are so many makes and models to try with and if you don't have them all, you can have customers complaining it doesn't work with their specific handset. Far easier to develop for iPhone. Do 99% of the code using the simulator and then buy a iPhone 4 and 5 for real world testing. Apple will do further testing and let you know the results.

Google on the other hand just take whatever you sent to them and throw it up on the store, then you get negative feedback from people who's phone it doesn't work on and you have to buy that specific phone (with possibly multiple different versions of the OS) to make it work.

On the whole I would agree, but it's getting a lot better lately regarding the variation in device specification. Certainly with the current push by Google for Nexus devices where they have control over the OS updates has improved things immensely.

On the subject of NFC specifically, I don't think the "fragmentation" argument holds true at all. There are only a handful of Android devices with NFC (compared with no iPhones at all) and the specification between them is very broadly the same. The two most popular ones being the Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy Nexus. Both of which have roughly the same screen size and resolution, and similar hardware capability.

Given that the S3 is currently the worlds best selling smartphone, even if they just targeted that one specific Android handset it would have made more sense than developing a hardware add-on for iPhone 4 - an add-on that doesn't even fit the latest iPhone 5 never mind work!

Gromitt

Hooloovoo wrote: »

Given that the S3 is currently the worlds best selling smartphone, even if they just targeted that one specific Android handset it would have made more sense than developing a hardware add-on for iPhone 4 - an add-on that doesn't even fit the latest iPhone 5 never mind work!

So there are more S3's sold than iPhone 4's ? If thats the case then I agree, but I wouldn't have thought it would be the case.