Nationwide messaging - If it ain't broke let's fix it.

bendipa

Since Nationwide building society has offered internet banking services (early '00s) there has always been a messaging service. If you had a banking or credit card problem, you logged in and hit the messaging tab, created a message describing the issue, and within 48 hours you received a response which usually sorted it out. It was a service that always worked well. That was until recently when Nationwide decided to scrap it and replace it with a 'Chat With Us' button that connects you to a bot. And since bots can only really cope with typical FAQ type questions, for customers whose issues are a little more complex than that, the bot is fairly useless and time-wasting. It then gives up and passes you to Customer Service where you actually get to deal with a real person. Whether such an individual has sufficient knowledge of a particular financial issue is something else. If they haven't and need to refer to someone at a higher level, then you've wasted even more time, whereas the old system would have dealt with your issue in one fell swoop, regardless of the complexity. Maybe CS would have responded by message requiring more info, but that would have been about it. Also a technical problem has now arisen with the new system.

If you use Firefox as your browser, you are going to have a technical issue before you even start trying to use the new system, because currently the 'Chat With Us' button is not visible. That means switching to another browser, telephoning Nationwide (can be expensive if you don't know the freephone number), or going to the local branch to try and sort the issue (can be a long wait if busy). If you use an alternative browser a further issue may occur. You may get a (we're sorry} pop-up error message -> https://imgur.com/a/y639trC. This occurred using my Chromium browser. After hours of getting nowhere fast I rang Nationwide about it, but all they could do was advise on the usual suspects: clear cookies, cache etc, none of which worked. Eventually I cracked the problem myself as I discovered that my cookie settings blocked 3rd party cookies, which is my normal setting anyway. Once I had unchecked that, finally I could use the Chat With Us' button without further ado. Fortunately I did not have an ongoing banking problem while I was trying to get the chat box to work. Had I had one I would have been fuming, all because Nationwide had to change a service which had been more than adequate for all the years it has been around, for one that I feel is going to cause much more inconvenience to customers. 

missile

Welcome to my world. MW delight in sending me messages and letters telling me a credit card transactions have been declined. They ask me to telephone. When I do, I am told we will phone you back within 5 minutes. They don't phone. I phone again, I am told we will phone you back within 5 minutes. I phone again ...........
I contact them via messenger, ...........
I write and they respond telling me to phone ........
I write and make a complaint, they respond to tell me they have been unable to contact me by phone ........
I e mail and no reply
I have complained to the ombudsman and await his response.

Rob5342

My experience is the same. I tried using the chat feature last week, after about 10 minutes they said they coudn't help and gave me a phone number to try. I then replied to an old message that was in my inbox to ask about the same thing, and the next morning it was all resolved.

I hate the bot things that try and answer your query. Most or all of what they suggest is on the website anyway, and then reason you use them is because what you need isn't on the website.

wiseonesomeofthetime

This bot experience isn't limited to Nationwide either, sadly.

thrifty_pete

Amazon's bot is pretty effective in my experience. Also the Vodafone one seemed OK a few years ago when I was with Voda. The danger is implementing these things before they are ready, or not investing enough so that the bot is effective. I imagine Amazon have the resources to do this properly, and Voda have bought in the expertise.

Speedbird676

Santander also replaced their Secure Message function with a Chat function. Completely useless!

Brie

And M&S bank.  Chat but no record kept of it and no way to print or download what has been said.

MACKEM99

I have come to the conclusion after various issues with Nationwide over the last few months, which they have dealt with appallingly and do not seem to care, that they seem to be going totally against the principles of being a "mutual".  In the second consecutive phone call from then that was cut off from a different person in their executive office, the caller said it must have been caused by a gust of wind? 

canaldumidi

Totally agree.

Unfortunately using these Bots is cheaper than having real people dealing with phonecalls or emails, as so many people give up with the Bots. I guess it does weed out a few enquiries that the bot can answer - those that are usually answered anyway in FAQs.

I made a complaint about removal of the messaging option. Pointless of course!

jimjames

I found the same as well recently when I needed to contact Nationwide. Bot was awful and no option to just send a message.

To cap it all the website kept timing out due to the delay between conversations. I can't sit with a window open moving the mouse constantly when I have other things going on so it should stay open all the time the chat is active. As soon as the inactivity logged out the chat session was lost and you reconnect to a new agent that needs to start again. Very poor.

miller

Agree that Nationwide's messaging feature usually resolved the issue, so disappointed to learn it has gone. For what it's worth, I'm trying to sort out an issue with Halifax at the moment through their Messaging feature on their app. It is totally useless as when you finally get through to a real person they don't seem to have access to any of the previous information so you have to start again from scratch.