Nationwide Building Society Loyalty!

talexuser

bowlhead99 said:

I presume she doesn't have very imaginative nightmares, and wonder if the flight delay was really as bad as if she were trying to run through quicksand to escape a thirty foot spider which had just eaten her daughter after chasing away the werewolf that raped her husband. 

Luxury!
We had to run away through lava from a sixty foot spider which had just eaten the entire family, and the werewolf.

digalumps

you had legs? you lucky lucky ....

badger09

You could afford nightmares? I could only stay awake dreaming about ever being able to afford a nightmare

Eco_Miser

Thrugelmir said: 

The Nationwide unlike many other building societies. Decided not to demutualise and has grown from strength to strength. With no shareholders to account to. Just members. 

When I first joined Nationwide, I was a shareholder. It said so on my passbook. That's what being a mutual meant - the customers were shareholders, and the shareholders were customers. And that's why we get to vote at the AGM, we're shareholders. So what's with this switch to saying there are no shareholders?

epm-84

Thrugelmir said:

epm-84 said:

bowlhead99 said:

epm-84 said:

digalumps said:

No idea - it's almost like there was some sort of disease suddenly striking all their staff at once. 

So you'd think rather than hefty interest rate reductions, they would withdraw the highest interest rate saving products to new customers and leave any significant interest changes or new product launches, until they have the staff available to cope with the high demand that will cause.  Some other banks and building societies have done that but not Nationwide.

If you have a couple of billion pound a year interest bill and want to reduce it, the most immediate and effective way to do that is to reduce the variable rate interest paid to existing depositors - rather than simply withdrawing the highest rate saving products from sale to new customers, which would have an extremely limited effect on reducing the existing bill.

On all the interest rate moan threads we get people saying "you'd think the'd just do [x], why does the CEO and board of directors get paid big salaries for this shambles", but perhaps the complainants have never tried to manage a financial institution with a 200 billion pound balance sheet; the organisation is likely better leaving it to the professionals and remunerating them at market rate, rather than taking comments from people on a moneysaving forum.

Look at what happened to the likes of RBS and Northern Rock - people highly experienced in the banking sector screwed up their respective bank's finances to the point where they were on the brink of collapse. 

The Nationwide unlike many other building societies. Decided not to demutualise and has grown from strength to strength. With no shareholders to account to. Just members. 

My point was even people who are highly experienced in the finance sector get things wrong.  The Nationwide board aren't exempt from that because they work for a mutual not a bank.  Nationwide board members aren't super intelligent infallible robots.

blue_max_3

epm-84 said:

My point was even people who are highly experienced in the finance sector get things wrong.  The Nationwide board aren't exempt from that because they work for a mutual not a bank.  Nationwide board members aren't super intelligent infallible robots.

There are two things they had to do. Fix a rate for mortgages and decide how much they were going to pay savers. The ignorance and arrogance that reducing an account from 1.1% to .25% is extraordinary. Who the hell wants to save for .25%?
And it's not like that is all you will get elsewhere is it? I had to spread my money around, but now it's just thrown in NS&I at 1%. £100,000 they no longer have to lend people for mortgages. I just feel their contempt is unbelievable.

wmb194

Thrugelmir said:

epm-84 said:

bowlhead99 said:

epm-84 said:

digalumps said:

No idea - it's almost like there was some sort of disease suddenly striking all their staff at once. 

So you'd think rather than hefty interest rate reductions, they would withdraw the highest interest rate saving products to new customers and leave any significant interest changes or new product launches, until they have the staff available to cope with the high demand that will cause.  Some other banks and building societies have done that but not Nationwide.

If you have a couple of billion pound a year interest bill and want to reduce it, the most immediate and effective way to do that is to reduce the variable rate interest paid to existing depositors - rather than simply withdrawing the highest rate saving products from sale to new customers, which would have an extremely limited effect on reducing the existing bill.

On all the interest rate moan threads we get people saying "you'd think the'd just do [x], why does the CEO and board of directors get paid big salaries for this shambles", but perhaps the complainants have never tried to manage a financial institution with a 200 billion pound balance sheet; the organisation is likely better leaving it to the professionals and remunerating them at market rate, rather than taking comments from people on a moneysaving forum.

Look at what happened to the likes of RBS and Northern Rock - people highly experienced in the banking sector screwed up their respective bank's finances to the point where they were on the brink of collapse. 

The Nationwide unlike many other building societies. Decided not to demutualise and has grown from strength to strength. With no shareholders to account to. Just members. 

Britannia didn't demutualise and what happened to it? IIRC it was poor management in relation to commercial property loans that sunk it and then concomitantly sunk the Co-op Bank, another mutual, after it unwisely rescued it. The type of ownership structure Nationwide employs doesn't really count for anything.

ratechaser

badger09 said:

You could afford nightmares? I could only stay awake dreaming about ever being able to afford a nightmare

I thought this was the MSE forum, not "Yorkshiremen Anonymous"...

port_of_spain

ratechaser said:

I thought this was the MSE forum, not "Yorkshiremen Anonymous"...

Nobody expects Yorkshiremen Anonymous! Our chief weapon is surprise ... surprise and flat caps ... flat caps and surprise ... Our two chief weapons are flat caps and surprise ... and whippets .....................................

digalumps

sounds like one of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treadle again.