Is Nationwide The best at the Minute?

Rob5342

I might be out of date on some of them. When you are used to everything that Monso and Sterling can do then Nationwide seem like something out of the stone age. I find it bizarre that a company whose primary business is finance puts so little effort into their app, it's like Netflix not having a pause button.

Fingerbobs

EarthBoy said:

Some of Nationwide's branches are so called "limited service" branches, which don't have a counter service, just banks of cash machines and computer terminals/tablets. Personally, I don't think these are worthy of the name "branch". 

I was faced with this in a branch of Barclays a couple of years ago. Just ranks of self-service machine, none of which I could use because I don't have a debit card on my Barclays account. Just an Authentication card which didn't work.

Fingerbobs

Rob5342 said:

I might be out of date on some of them. When you are used to everything that Monso and Sterling can do then Nationwide seem like something out of the storage. I find it bizarre that a company whose primary business is finance puts so little effort into their appz it's like Netflix not having a pause button.

Monzo and Starling have always had way more features in their apps than the traditional banks, presumably because they only operate through their app and have no other access channels. I've always viewed the bank apps as ancillary to the web sites.

Rich1976

I don’t think we would ever choose to go back to Nationwide unless they had a compelling offer which was too good to refuse. We were with them for a few years and the service from the branch, to the call centre was just average at best. Even logging a complaint they couldn’t deal with effectively.
i think the credit card was the worst but then we discovered that call centre is outsourced to another company so probably not surprising.

hpas251

lr1277 said:

Good point about Nationwide: I believe both their credit card and debit card are free of forex charges. But if this is important to you, please check.

Not so good point: Whilst they are apparently not closing branches at least one branch has gone part-time. It is now open on 3 weekdays and Saturday morning.

There is no foreign exchange fee on the credit card or the FlexPlus (packaged bank account) debit card. The FlexAccount and FlexDirect debit cards do have a foreign exchange fee (2.5% IIRC).

Nationwide used to have no foreign exchange fees at all. In fact, they had an TV advert with Mark Benton playing an unreasonable bank manager defending foreign exchange fees, and stating that as a building society they were different from banks by not charging foreign exchange fees.

Fingerbobs

hpas251 said:

lr1277 said:

Good point about Nationwide: I believe both their credit card and debit card are free of forex charges. But if this is important to you, please check.

Not so good point: Whilst they are apparently not closing branches at least one branch has gone part-time. It is now open on 3 weekdays and Saturday morning.

There is no foreign exchange fee on the credit card or the FlexPlus (packaged bank account) debit card. The FlexAccount and FlexDirect debit cards do have a foreign exchange fee (2.5% IIRC).

Nationwide used to have no foreign exchange fees at all. In fact, they had an TV advert with Mark Benton playing an unreasonable bank manager defending foreign exchange fees, and stating that as a building society they were different from banks by not charging foreign exchange fees.

That was back when their motto was "Proud to be Different." They dropped that slogan years ago when they became no different from any mainstream bank.