Nationwide FlexPlus Letter 18.01.24

MoneySavingTextbook

Today I’ve received a letter from Nationwide titled ‘Please consider if you need to take action as a result of this letter’. Basically, between May 2018 & April 2023 I (and I’m sure many others) have not been receiving annual letters detailing account benefits, changes and amendments - technically they have changed a policy, continued to charge me and haven’t informed me. 

My question is simple, am I therefore entitled to a £13 per month refund between those dates (that’s the price of FlexPlus) and ha anyone else had the same letter? 

DE_612183

Do you know what changes were made that you were unaware of?

Thats probably the key - if that is the case you may well say, "well if I knew that I would have closed the account and gone somewhere else".

Nasqueron

MoneySavingTextbook said:

Today I’ve received a letter from Nationwide titled ‘Please consider if you need to take action as a result of this letter’. Basically, between May 2018 & April 2023 I (and I’m sure many others) have not been receiving annual letters detailing account benefits, changes and amendments - technically they have changed a policy, continued to charge me and haven’t informed me. 

My question is simple, am I therefore entitled to a £13 per month refund between those dates (that’s the price of FlexPlus) and ha anyone else had the same letter? 

No you are not entitled to a refund but they may pay something if you complain and can show you were miss-sold

craig_40

So I had the same letter, and just had a refund of over £500.

in short, this applies if you have another paid for packaged bank account (IE Monzo Premium) which has similar benefits.

Nationwide basically messed up and didn’t remind customers about FlexPlus benefits for around 2-3 years. As a result of that, they are worried that they’ve not fulfilled a promised obligation to the customers by giving them a yearly reminder. Essentially a “hey, just to remind you, you have car breakdown cover, phone insurance” etc.

Because they forgot to remind customers, some customers (myself included) totally forget it existed on the account. (“But how didn’t you know?!” - it’s a side account we use purely for bills, and never looked at it frequently. All the outgoings are bills, so it’s easily overlooked).

In my case, I already had Monzo Premium, paying £15 a month for almost identical perks. Had I realised I already had it via Nationwide I obviously wouldn’t have bothered in the first place.

Nationwide, obviously, wanted proof of this, so I obliged and evidenced that essentially I was paying for another packaged bank account with similar perks, and didn’t know FlexPlus existed.

As a result, I was given a credit of money to cover the fees I paid for Monzo Premium, along the same period of time I had FlexPlus; plus interest.

It’s a kind gesture in fairness, and fair play for Nationwide for being honest about the lack of yearly reminders. I could imagine some financial institutions would just send a reminder and pretend nothing ever happened, but in the age of Martin Lewis and MSE they’d have been found out sooner or later.

So yes, well done Nationwide. Made a mistake, owned it, asked Customers if they were financially affected, and credited money where appropriate.