£100 payment - Nationwide Fairer Share

DS_MSE

I think the 12.6M Savers that have been excluded from Nationwide’s ‘Fairer Share’ Profit Distribution (including myself), deserve, at the least, an immediate full and frank explanation from the CEO of Nationwide - Debbie Crosbie, as to how Nationwide arrived at and chose their current ‘Fairer Share Payment’ selection criteria, explain why they think this was appropriate and how they think this accurately identifies genuinely loyal Members that deserve a share of the Societies profits over and above other long standing Members of the Society.

Sitting on this side of the ‘fence’ one might be forgiven for thinking that they had a maximum figure they were prepared to distribute (let’s say up to £350M - which again begs the question why only this amount and what’s happening to the rest ?) and a target payment amount for each qualifying member - since £100 seems a very convenient and nice ‘headline grabbing’ round sum, before working backwards, no doubt calculating all the different permutations of membership criteria in order to arrive at an acceptable target of 3.4M qualifying Members - Bingo - Job Done, without stopping to think whether this resulting permutation was fair and more importantly morally defendable.

DS_MSE

Do Nationwide and perhaps more importantly do the Board and CEO genuinely believe that a brand new Current Account Member who they have recently attracted with a Switching Cash incentive who just happens to have £100 invested in a Flex Save Account opened at the same time as their Current Account is more valuable to the society than a Lifetime Member and their Lifetime savings ? If they do, I think they have a shock coming !

flaneurs_lobster

DS_MSE said:

Do Nationwide and perhaps more importantly do the Board and CEO genuinely believe that a brand new Current Account Member who they have recently attracted with a Switching Cash incentive who just happens to have £100 invested in a Flex Save Account opened at the same time as their Current Account is more valuable to the society than a Lifetime Member and their Lifetime savings ? If they do, I think they have a shock coming !

I think that's exactly what they believe. What other reason can there be for their freebie distribution rationale?

km1500

I wonder how many people will just simply be annoyed and how many will make a formal complaints because obviously it is the latter that shows in their statistics

Sarahspangles

I’ll no doubt get shot down on this but the first line of the announcement is that this is for people who bank AND borrow or save with Nationwide. Maybe I’m wrong but I suspect a majority of people just have one bank current account, and will at least consider that bank when they have money to save or need a mortgage. So if you ask them, that’s their bank. I have savings with two other institutions but they’re not my bank.

metrobus

They have done it in a fair way, like it says it’s for ACTIVE CA holders AND savers.
All this bleating by the people who do not meet the criteria is becoming a bit boring now. Remember no one has lost a penny.

Sarahspangles

metrobus said:

They have done it in a fair way, like it says it’s for ACTIVE CA holders AND savers.
All this bleating by the people who do not meet the criteria is becoming a bit boring now. Remember no one has lost a penny.

They aren’t the only bank or building society that’s moving back towards rewarding longer term loyalty - the YBS Loyalty Six eISA requires you to have had savings or a mortgage for at least twelve months.

It can’t be cost effective for banks and building societies to have all these zombie accounts feeding each other money to artificially make it look like people are now customers, just to qualify for incentives. It’s like stoozing - it was legal and it was lucrative, but also it was a ‘loophole’ and in the long run it wasn't sustainable for providers.

IanManc

metrobus said:

They have done it in a fair way, like it says it’s for ACTIVE CA holders AND savers.
All this bleating by the people who do not meet the criteria is becoming a bit boring now. Remember no one has lost a penny.

No, it is far more than a penny.

Nationwide is a business which is owned by its members. And approximately 80% of those members have seen £340million taken out of the business to be given to the other 20% of the members, based on arbitrary, divisive and retrospective criteria - not in a manner which could reasonably be described as "in a fair way".

Meanwhile, if you find the postings on the topic boring, there is no one forcing you to read them.

TheBanker

I don't think in the 'real world' there are many people switching accounts and shuffling money around each month to qualify for cashback. If you look at the switching stats as a percentage of the UK adult population, they are tiny. And of those, most will be genuine switchers who want to use the new bank's services. 

If switching incentives weren't beneficial to the banks, they would have stopped running them. But in fact more banks have joined the party, and the incentives on offer have increased. 

allison445

metrobus said:

They have done it in a fair way, like it says it’s for ACTIVE CA holders AND savers.
All this bleating by the people who do not meet the criteria is becoming a bit boring now. Remember no one has lost a penny.

I am both of these and still don't qualify the headlines and criteria from Nationwide mislead a lot of customers who like me thought they had qualified only to find out they did not

The headline is when we profit so do our members everyone who uses Nationwide is a member but only a small number will get the bonus there are a lot of upset and distressed customers who could use this money they are voicing there opinion not bleating

When a company you have used and trusted for many years turns round and says to many members you are not worthy those members will obviously be hurt.

I expect the headlines by the end of this week not to be in Nationwide's favour 
Just to add there has still been no communication from Nationwide addressing the issues raised by the members who have been excluded and there misleading headline remains on there web site.