Swift Payment - Nationwide Nightmare

angrant

I am travelling around world at the moment and I am currently in Ecuador. I wanted to go on a cruise to the Galapagos Islands and it seemed the best way to transfer the payment was via Swift payment. I did this on the 15th August and the money left my account on the 17th August
both Nationwide website and a customer service advisor I spoke to said it would take up to 3 days.

A week later no sign of it, I chased up Nationwide (costing me £1.50 per minute to call) they told me they had sent the payment, its with the other bank in the US (my travel agents bank) and there was nothing they could do. With several phone calls and visits to the travel agent and them being on the phone to their bank they were adamant they had no sight of it.

To cut a very long story short I have rang Nationwide nearly every day, each day they have lied to me and told me a completely different story, they do not use an intermediary bank, next day they do its HSBC and they are holding up payment, next day its with the American bank and they are holding up payment etc etc

Anyway it has now been nearly three weeks and I am meant to be leaving in 2 days for cruise, I have my flights and hotel booked and there is no sign of the payment. The most recent update I have had from Nationwide today is all of the other conversations were not true and they only sent the payment to their intermediary bank (HSBC) 2 days ago. So two and a half weeks later.

I will lose my money for flights and accommodation if I don't go on this cruise so I am going to go to the Travel Agents today and pay by debit card (where I will be charged a 7 percent fee) I have spent one hour and a half on phone calls from Ecuador at £1.50 per minute.

I have now told them to send back the money as there is no way it will arrive on time so I would lose it anyway.

They are saying I may be liable for all sorts of charges and may not even receive the money back. I have obviously put in a complaint and am prepared to take this all the way although travelling will make things difficult.

I wonder if anyone has any advice on where I stand with this?

Thanks in advance

agrinnall

When are you expecting to be back in the UK? I think this will be a great deal easier to follow up from here rather than Ecuador or other exotic locations, where your time will be better spent on other things. If you make sure you have a record of what and when you've done and were told then you can use that to cross-check the timeline that Nationwide's records show (a SAR could be useful to see if they did actually delay sending the payment).

But in the meantime I'd stop worrying about it and get on with enjoying myself.

angrant

Well this is the problem I am travelling until February. So today I am going to have to pay the money again (over 3k) on a debit card which may not sound a lot but when you are travelling it is and I have no idea when I will get the original money back and how much more money I will lose in the meantime with all these charges they are threatening. My phone bill to them will be around £135 I will have to pay £210 to use my debit card now (7 percent surcharge) I already paid £20 for the swift payment. And then they are threatening all other charges for asking for it back! (or saying I may not get the money back at all if it reaches the recipient)

Its all just completely out of line and there is nothing (I don't believe) that I could have done any differently and I am being penalised for this banks incompetence.

Can you tell me what an SAR is please? (I googled it but it was coming up with all sort of things)

mgdavid

Subject Access Request...

Thrugelmir

angrant wrote: »

Its all just completely out of line and there is nothing (I don't believe) that I could have done any differently and I am being penalised for this banks incompetence.

No incompetence. Nationwide has no ability to control the transfer once the money has left the account. Whose the intermediary for the receiving bank? The money might well pass several hands before it arrives.

angrant

But the money didn't leave Nationwide until Tuesday. Two weeks and one day after it left my account

HSBC is the intermediary bank they process all there international payments through.

There is no doubt it is incompetence as I have spoken to them every day and they have lied to me every day telling me the bank in the US was holding it up when it had never left Nationwide.

Even the Customer Service Manager yesterday said she was embarrassed as the Swift Team hadn't told her the truth either and she only found out today that they only processed it on Tuesday to HSBC

nyermen

It sounds like Nationwide have messed up, maybe it got stuck pending compliance check or something like that. The problem is any internal payment process will likely not be visible to staff on the phone, but they should at least know they can't see it. Since they didn't know they use a correspondent (it's on their website...), it sounds like the training manual is a bit small.

Not sure what to suggest, Nationwide should have been in control of this. Likelihood is the money will arrive soon now it's been sent (unless it's held up by other banks in the chain). Banks that use the Swift network are normally pretty well setup (Swift have a reputation to keep, software in banks to handle them is normally tested & certified by swift etc).

They're right about one thing though - you can't normally reverse a swift payment once it's been made. The receiver would need to send it back, and Swift would charge their fees again. It's because of what goes on, particularly in the case of via correspondent bank, because Nationwide will actually issue a swift message direct to the receiving bank (probably a 202), and another to their own correspondent bank to pay (probably a 103), so to cancel, they'd have to reverse multiple instructions.

Follow people above - a Subject Access Request will reveal when the payment was actually sent. You then need to check the T&C guiding their payment service (eg. do they say it can take 2 weeks?). If it turns out they did muck up, you could push for some form of compensation, maybe a refund of the 7% debit card fee plus the swift charges?

Ballard

In this case the ultimate beneficiary of the funds was an account held in the US so it would only be an MT103 from Nationwide to HSBC so there SHOULDN'T be too much of a hold up either sending or returning the funds.

It could be that Nationwide suspected money laundering in which case they're entitled (forced) to delay payment. Furthermore, they wouldn't be permitted to disclose the reason for the delay. In all fairness this does seem unlikely with the information provided but it's not impossible.

Charges made by Swift are minimal in the grand scheme of things. Banks get charged per message sent and received by Swift. Swift don't actually do any investigations, they're just the messengers.

Edit: I should have mentioned that there will be charges as Nationwide will need to ask HSBC to recall the funds. They will contact the beneficiary bank to ask them and they will need to contact the beneficiary for their permission. This is where the charges add up.

angrant

Thank you for your replies.

I requested to cancel the swift payment and had to pay the travel company by debit card as we ran out of time but today the swift payment has gone through so they are going to refund me in cash (the travel company) as I can't be dealing with the stress of putting it back through Nationwide.

I will definitely look into SAR and see what the response is from the complaints team once they have investigated it. Really what I would like is a refund of the 7 percent additional charge for having to use my debit and for my phone calls in a ideal world. I will update how I get on.

The Customer Service Manager said she added notes to my complaint that I had been completely misinformed during the whole process and she was too and said this was not how Nationwide normally operate and can completely understand why I am not happy. I don't know if that is just lip service but we will see.

Thanks again