A Nationwide Nightmare!!

arab9893

Hi there,

About 2 months ago my wife and I spoke to an independent financial advisor friend of mine who suggested we could be saving money on our £90k mortgage as we are looking to borrow an extra £30k for house improvements and consolidate a small amount of debt.

We are currently halfway through a 10 year deal with Nationwide which is at 6.2%, my friend said he could get us a £120k mortgage with Virgin for 3.29%, saving several thousand pounds over 5 years, even after early repayment fees. However on his advice he said to go to see Nationwide to see what they could do for us.

We did this 7 weeks ago and the mortgage advisor in our local branch came up with a deal for us to move our current £90k mortgage onto a 3.09% deal and the extra £30k at 3.49%. The monthly repayments worked out a little better than the Virgin deal so we decided a couple of weeks later to go ahead with Nationwide. The Nationwide advisor said we would apply for the extra £30k then once approved we would switch our original mortgage onto the new deal.

The application was sent to the underwriters along with P60's, bank statements, usual stuff. He said that this usually takes a week. After 2 weeks of no communication I emailed the Nationwide advisor who forwarded me an email he had received 3 days earlier (?!?!) saying that they were missing one page of bank statements. OK fair enough, human error I thought. Sent the missing page on, waited another week with no communication and chased again to be told we were in a further queue but would know by the end of last week.

Guess what, yet again no phone call or email so chased up again today to be told that our application for the £30k had been approved in principle. Great I thought. However he went on to tell me that what he had said about moving our original £90k mortgage onto a new deal was not possible due to company policy!!!

So after much discussion, as you can imagine my wife and I were far from happy with the situation, he said there was nothing he could do for us in regards to switching our original deal, and there was probably no chance of getting any compensation for the complete incompetence and the extra interest we have paid both on our existing mortgage which we could have switched to Virgin 2 months ago, and on our credit card debt which would have been consolidated by now.

Not to mention that it will now be on our credit rating that we have applied for a £30k mortgage with Nationwide that we will no longer require. Will this affect our credit rating if we were to go ahead and apply for the Virgin deal? Both our credit ratings are excellent as far as I know.

The most incredible thing is that even after 20 minutes on the phone with me and 30 minutes on the phone with my wife, he never once apologised for the inconvenience caused and didn;t sound in the slightest concerned that we would be complaining.

We have given him 24 hours to come up with something to keep our business however we are not hopeful. I would actually be surprised if we even receive a phone call.

Has anyone else experienced such poor customer service with Nationwide and how did you go about complaining? The branch manager has also known about this for over a day and she hasn't even bothered to call.

Thanks

Crashandburn

Sorry to hear this but there was a similar thread recently where it seemed in house advisers at the Nationwide don't know how to process further advances and product switches at the same time. Just seems you've got one of those advisers.

Thrugelmir

arab9893 wrote: »

Hi there,

About 2 months ago my wife and I spoke to an independent financial advisor friend of mine who suggested we could be saving money on our £90k mortgage as we are looking to borrow an extra £30k for house improvements and consolidate a small amount of debt.

We are currently halfway through a 10 year deal with Nationwide which is at 6.2%, my friend said he could get us a £120k mortgage with Virgin for 3.29%, saving several thousand pounds over 5 years, even after early repayment fees. However on his advice he said to go to see Nationwide to see what they could do for us.

We did this 7 weeks ago and the mortgage advisor in our local branch came up with a deal for us to move our current £90k mortgage onto a 3.09% deal and the extra £30k at 3.49%. The monthly repayments worked out a little better than the Virgin deal so we decided a couple of weeks later to go ahead with Nationwide. The Nationwide advisor said we would apply for the extra £30k then once approved we would switch our original mortgage onto the new deal.

The application was sent to the underwriters along with P60's, bank statements, usual stuff. He said that this usually takes a week. After 2 weeks of no communication I emailed the Nationwide advisor who forwarded me an email he had received 3 days earlier (?!?!) saying that they were missing one page of bank statements. OK fair enough, human error I thought. Sent the missing page on, waited another week with no communication and chased again to be told we were in a further queue but would know by the end of last week.

Guess what, yet again no phone call or email so chased up again today to be told that our application for the £30k had been approved in principle. Great I thought. However he went on to tell me that what he had said about moving our original £90k mortgage onto a new deal was not possible due to company policy!!!

So after much discussion, as you can imagine my wife and I were far from happy with the situation, he said there was nothing he could do for us in regards to switching our original deal, and there was probably no chance of getting any compensation for the complete incompetence and the extra interest we have paid both on our existing mortgage which we could have switched to Virgin 2 months ago, and on our credit card debt which would have been consolidated by now.

Not to mention that it will now be on our credit rating that we have applied for a £30k mortgage with Nationwide that we will no longer require. Will this affect our credit rating if we were to go ahead and apply for the Virgin deal? Both our credit ratings are excellent as far as I know.

The most incredible thing is that even after 20 minutes on the phone with me and 30 minutes on the phone with my wife, he never once apologised for the inconvenience caused and didn;t sound in the slightest concerned that we would be complaining.

We have given him 24 hours to come up with something to keep our business however we are not hopeful. I would actually be surprised if we even receive a phone call.

Has anyone else experienced such poor customer service with Nationwide and how did you go about complaining? The branch manager has also known about this for over a day and she hasn't even bothered to call.

Thanks

There's no need to start a third post on the same topic.

kingstreet

If you are in a fix with Nationwide you cannot pay the ERP and switch to another Nationwide product. Your only option is to remortgage away. Their own advisers don't seem to know this!

Crashandburn

Crashandburn wrote: »

Sorry to hear this but there was a similar thread recently where it seemed in house advisers at the Nationwide don't know how to process further advances and product switches at the same time. Just seems you've got one of those advisers.

Okay. So it was your own rant on this I was quoting!

kingstreet

Yep. I did the same thing.

Crashandburn

kingstreet wrote: »

Yep. I did the same thing.

Obviously not happy!

arab9893

The question I have actually asked is what is the best way to go about putting in a complaint?

Dave_Ham

In writing, stating how you have been financially disadvantaged.

kingstreet

Nationwide Building Society
Pipers Way
Swindon
SN38 1NW

9 April 2013

Dear Sirs,

Mortgage Account -

With reference to the above, I have recently approached your XXX Branch for advice about my mortgage and additional borrowing.

During my discussions, I was told that I could apply for additional borrowing and pay the early redemption penalty and replace my existing offer with a new, lower rate with Nationwide.

I applied for the additional borrowing and was accepted and now find I am unable to change deals, even if I pay the ERP. Others have made me aware this is standard Nationwide policy and I have expended considerable time and effort with something which was never going to proceed.

I'm disappointed that anonymous brokers on an internet site (forums. MoneySavingExpert.com) knew more about your procedures than your own employees.

Please investigate and offer compensation for my inconvenience and the cost of delaying my new mortgage.

Yours faithfully,

Expect acknowledgement in a few days and final response in a eight weeks. If the final response is not acceptable, you have six months to escalate to FOS;-

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

Simon_gloster

A combination of additional lending and product transfer is not allowed at nw. You got a numpty there. Work out the difference in the deals you got. £5 per call. Distress inconvenience.......I could go on.


A £300 er there Del boy.