Hating the look of the Nationwide Banking app

LeesArt

Has anyone seen the critical reviews of the Nationwide Banking App on Apple App store or on Trustpilot?

I foolishly upgraded because they put nagware at the entrance to the old app so I thought it was a security update.

I WOULD WARN ANY NATIONWIDE CUSTOMER DO NOT UPGRADE

It is a dogs dinner or rather dog vomit app (think of your reaction to the smell when you come down in the morning to find dog has vomited).

I am hoping to upload some screenshots once I have redacted but suffice to say it is truly AWFUL, the list is too long and you can't avoid it as they are using it to authenticate you.  It seems to be a combination of missing data that was there before, moved or lost menu options, mixing different font numerous sizes on same screen and while data is missing there are massive gaps of unused space. Yet bizarrely they kept the instant save pesterware despite it being deactivated. The account only shows one transaction on load up and just a handful per screen if you scroll and It does not improve with accessibility settings being tweaked.

Nothing aligns, it is as if it was all just thrown at the screen, every transaction has bloatware starting with a letter like A for Aldi (not needed) and if you tap the A it loads the address of the shop.  This is using Google Maps which raises a massive privacy issue as all Google tools profile and record, yet there was no consent to this,  strangely Apple maps seems to be used in other parts of the app, so why use Google at all. If you care about your online privacy and takes steps to prevent tracking then this app's use of Google Maps will undermine this and it will be hard if not impossible to prevent it as your device fingerprint along with IP, session info and other metrics will enable them to recombine you 

It is not easy to avoid because as you have to scroll a lot more and if you accidentally tap but also because the Nationwide app has done away with THE BALANCE between transactions, so the only way to see your balance before or after a transaction is to drill down to that same screen that uses Google API (which grabs your personal data).  

This removal is absurd, because the app loads with numerous duplicate data, each on it's own line and in as many as three different fonts. Here is an example of clicking on an account

____________________________
Account Name
Sort Code Account number

Account Name           i
£500.12                 More info

-----------------------------------------------
Overdraft Limit: £0000.00      >

G                               G                     G                
Pay or move Money Manage cards More Options
-----------------------------------------------
     Spare Change £1.52
     move spare change from recent     SAVE IT
     transactions to your savings?
-----------------------------------------------
Transactions                       G Search & Filter

Today                                  £500.12
-----------------------------------------------
    G  Aldi                   -£55.78 >
-----------------------------------------------

Yesterday                          £555.90
------------------------------------------------ 
____________________________

This is supposed to be a transaction screen, like a statement but it only shows a single transaction.  A screen with 4 transactions over 4 days shows 4 different balances each on a line by itself but no balance where you want it, on the same line as the transaction.  

What is lost on this platform is the font sizes, G is for graphic or logo symbol, menu options that used to be at the bottom or top are now within the data and scroll off the screen with it, so if you see a transaction and want to choose those options you have to scroll back. As you scroll transactions are in a very faint box, which just steals screen space.  It is so poorly aligned. The menu options at the bottom are not customisable and just used for marketing products or for help. there are four options when there is room for 5.

The top right settings option is on the home screen but not in the account screen  

Credits are in Green but debits are in black not red, but they are in the SAME COLUMN despite the credit having an extra line saying BANK CREDIT (so plenty of space to have aligned it into a separate column.  The whole text design It is a splatter gun artwork affect rather than clean lines for the eye to follow.

I think kindergarten kids could have done better, some of the reviews are hilarious, calling it a Fisher Price edition or moving an iPad app onto a blackberry.

We have had bank statements since my parents were kids, but they have managed to miss the basics, (Date Description, credit, debits & balance for each line. Instead you get wasted lines with just the date, wasting even more screen space.

It is unusable and is the first app that makes me want to throw my phone at the wall because of frustration.

Almost every 1 star negative review on Apple App Store (of which there are pages and pages going back to end of Jan) is complaining about the new design.  Many are asking for a rollback to previous design or a legacy version under another name.

There is so much more, almost every screen has issues and yet age old issues that have been previously reported remain or are even worse.

On Trustpilot it tends to me a mix of poor service and the awful new app design, but Nationwide had a rating of 1.7 with no replies to customers so it seems they do not want to engage.

Nationwide are buying Virgin Money so they will need to avoid migration too.

If you are a Nationwide customer and you have been upgraded to this mess then I urge you to call Nationwide and give them feedback.  If ever there was an urgent reason to disable automatic updates on your phone this is it, because there is no rollback on Apple and only hacked roll back on Android.

Rob5342

If a remotely decent app matters to you then you don't go anywhere near Nationwide, every other bank is far better.

Zanderman

There's an existing thread about the new app on the forum, maybe better to post there than starting a new one.

It's here https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6512527/hating-the-look-of-the-nationwide-banking-app

Edited to add (on 15th March) that the two threads have, very sensibly, now been merged, in  case anyone was wondering why I wrote the above. 

jameseonline

Not being funny but the Letter/company logo thing on transactions list has been a thing for a while now, even before the new refreshed app, so not sure when you last used the app tbh.

As already mentioned there's already a thread on the new look app which isn't that much different to previous version other than home screen.

LeesArt

jameseonline said:

Not being funny but the Letter/company logo thing on transactions list has been a thing for a while now, even before the new refreshed app, so not sure when you last used the app tbh.

As already mentioned there's already a thread on the new look app which isn't that much different to previous version other than home screen.

I am sorry but it is MASSIVELY different, just go read all the reviews on App Store, I am going to redact some images and upload them, it is truly awful.

LeesArt

Zanderman said:

There's an existing thread about the new app on the forum, maybe better to post there than starting a new one.

It's here https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6512527/hating-the-look-of-the-nationwide-banking-app

It is not an MSE thread and like everybody on here I am entitled to share my experiences in my own thread, not better to keep adding to an existing thread only to be told "why did you reactivate an old thread" better to keep the issue alive and make the time I have invested more likely to be seen.

People write about Sky, BT, Octopus and 100 other companies every day about the same issues, I don't see them being told maybe they would be better off posting to a thread that is already going off at tangents to become off topic.

noitsnotme

It’s not that bad.  It’s not the best banking app I’ve used but also not the worst.

Kim_13

Forced upgrade here today. 

Digital_Payback

noitsnotme said:

It’s not that bad.  It’s not the best banking app I’ve used but also not the worst.

My thoughts too! As long as money is safe and the interest rate is good, there is really little to complain about surely. The App. will probably be refined in time. 

GreenScepter

I don't think warning people not to update will do much good, usually with these kinds of apps you'll have to update (at least at some point) or you can't use it.

To add my 2 cents, I like that they're trying to improve things, but they don't seem to be doing enough to catch up with the features of other banks. And the things they did add don't seem to work. For instance: they added face ID and when I went to add a new payee, I still needed the card reader despite setting up face ID. Which isn't useful at all if you wanted to send someone new a bit of money while out and about. Sure you can use PayPal or whatnot but it adds to the faff, a faff I didn't have with other banks.