£100 payment - Nationwide Fairer Share

NorfolkCanary

Band7 said:

HonestJohn said:

Nationwide hardly rewarding loyalty here. Most long term customers will lose out. Just another marketing gimmick. I'll have to settle for the £30 cashback I got. Not much for being a customer of NW (and the societies it took over) for 40 years. 

How do you know that most long term customers  will lose out?

Poor showing tbh. Despite being a member since smart2save days, what 25 years ago? I don't qualify as I've only held their current acc for 20 odd years and dumped their savings several years ago.

Band7

I have sympathy for the frustration of those who are missing out for one reason or another.

However, I can’t see what Nationwide could have done which would treat all their customers in a genuinely fair and equal way. If they gave all their customers the same amount of money, there would no doubt be even more complaints from those who think it’s unfair that customers of many years get the same as those who only joined a few months ago. Paying all customers would probably also have meant a much, much lower amount than £100 per customer, so would have attracted further criticism. If they had more eligibility criteria, no doubt it would have added tremendously to the admin costs - and would no doubt have led to even more complaints from people who stillwere excluded.

I think that whatever option Nationwide came up with would have winners and losers.

I also understand that Nationwide did consult customers who have chosen to be in their Connect Community (https://www.nationwide.co.uk/about-us/have-your-say/connect-community).
I didn’t know about this community until yesterday, when someone mentioned it in the context of the “Fairer Share”.


May be I am missing a glaringly obvious solution that would be considered acceptable by all. So can anyone describe what they would consider fair and equitable for all?

allison445

Nice to see a company rewarding members but it seems a little unfair that not everyone will receive the payment may have been fairer to give a smaller amount to all

NorfolkCanary

Band7 said:

May be I am missing a glaringly obvious solution that would be considered acceptable by all. So can anyone describe what they would consider fair and equitable for all?

£10 per customer per year of membership, as visible on the browse-->overview page

allison445

Band7 said:

May be I am missing a glaringly obvious solution that would be considered acceptable by all. So can anyone describe what they would consider fair and equitable for all?

I doubt this would have been achievable but it may have been fairer to give it back to the members who they had made the profits from which I presume would be the credit card, loan and mortgage customers those who are now paying crippling interest rates

Band7

NorfolkCanary said:

Band7 said:

HonestJohn said:

Nationwide hardly rewarding loyalty here. Most long term customers will lose out. Just another marketing gimmick. I'll have to settle for the £30 cashback I got. Not much for being a customer of NW (and the societies it took over) for 40 years. 

How do you know that most long term customers  will lose out?

Poor showing tbh. Despite being a member since smart2save days, what 25 years ago? I don't qualify as I've only held their current acc for 20 odd years and dumped their savings several years ago.

So you don’t actually know that most long term customers are losing out. You are just hurting that you lost out.

Do you have a solution that would have been fair and equitable to all, that nobody could have complained about?

Band7

allison445 said:

Band7 said:

May be I am missing a glaringly obvious solution that would be considered acceptable by all. So can anyone describe what they would consider fair and equitable for all?

I doubt this would have been achievable but it may have been fairer to give it back to the members who they had made the profits from which I presume would be the credit card, loan and mortgage customers those who are now paying crippling interest rates

That would have excluded all those who don’t have a CC, loan or mortgage but who, in many cases, have given Nationwide the money they were able to lend to people. In many cases over many years. I doubt those people would have been happy.

Band7

NorfolkCanary said:

Band7 said:

May be I am missing a glaringly obvious solution that would be considered acceptable by all. So can anyone describe what they would consider fair and equitable for all?

£10 per customer per year of membership, as visible on the browse-->overview page

I like that - because it is simple, has a definite loyalty element to it, and it would pay me £230 🤣.

Question is whether it would cost more than the £340m they have allocated, or whether it would need to be a lot less than a tenner a year.

allison445

Band7 said:

allison445 said:

Band7 said:

May be I am missing a glaringly obvious solution that would be considered acceptable by all. So can anyone describe what they would consider fair and equitable for all?

I doubt this would have been achievable but it may have been fairer to give it back to the members who they had made the profits from which I presume would be the credit card, loan and mortgage customers those who are now paying crippling interest rates

That would have excluded all those who don’t have a CC, loan or mortgage but who, in many cases, have given Nationwide the money they were able to lend to people. In many cases over many years. I doubt those people would have been happy.

The burb says The Nationwide Fairer Share

When we profit, so do our members.

should say some of our members 

I am a long term customer of nationwide have a sizable chunk of savings with them and a current account I do not qualify as I do not have £500 going in to my account every month its usually around the £400 mark 

This sounds like a marketing ploy to entice more members in hoping to get a slice of next years profits hopefully more than the number who will leave due to the unfair treatment of the fairer share scheme

TheBanker

Band7 said:

I have sympathy for the frustration of those who are missing out for one reason or another.

However, I can’t see what Nationwide could have done which would treat all their customers in a genuinely fair and equal way. If they gave all their customers the same amount of money, there would no doubt be even more complaints from those who think it’s unfair that customers of many years get the same as those who only joined a few months ago. Paying all customers would probably also have meant a much, much lower amount than £100 per customer, so would have attracted further criticism. If they had more eligibility criteria, no doubt it would have added tremendously to the admin costs - and would no doubt have led to even more complaints from people who stillwere excluded.

I think that whatever option Nationwide came up with would have winners and losers.

I also understand that Nationwide did consult customers who have chosen to be in their Connect Community (https://www.nationwide.co.uk/about-us/have-your-say/connect-community).
I didn’t know about this community until yesterday, when someone mentioned it in the context of the “Fairer Share”.


May be I am missing a glaringly obvious solution that would be considered acceptable by all. So can anyone describe what they would consider fair and equitable for all?

My frustration isn't missing out on £100. It is a sense of disappointment that, as a mutual organisation which I own a part of, Nationwide consider me less important than some of the other members. Despite the fact I have a £200k mortgage with them as well as savings etc. Their implication is that I am a less valuable customer because I didn't pay in £500 in either February or March (but I did pay in over £1,000 in January which stayed with Nationwide - I didn't transfer it straight out again as some will have done).

How would I have done this? For mortgage customers a pro-rata refund of interest they've paid over the last year. For savings customers, a pro-rata uplift in the interest earned over the past year. This interest paid/not paid is, after all, what has contributed to Nationwide's profits. For current account customers it is more difficult - and they may have had to take the approach they have. An alternative approach could have been to take into account length of membership. 

The point here isn't that I didn't get cashback. It's that Nationwide think I am not as important as some of their other members. Like I said earlier, this is different to a bank, Nationwide is a mutual who are owned by their members and make a big deal about being run in the best interests of their members.