Nationwide FlexPlus fee hiked to £18/month from December

jimjames

TadleyBaggie said:

It's quite a big jump but it hasn't had an increase for around 7 years. Still worth it for me for the travel insurance and breakdown cover alone.

Absolutely. If you have a joint account it works out even better as both benefit from the features

VXman

balsingh said:

Looking to ditch the whole packaged account and see if I can get better deals for the Travel Insurance and the Breakdown cover separately. The mobile cover wasn't great. When I used it recently, the excess was huge and the replacement phone was a refurb/recon phone which also ended up going faulty.

Breakdown cover for me and the wife in any car (and motorhome) we drive, covers my 21 year old car too, also EU cover, plus worldwide travel insurance for me and the family. Still good value at £216 a year. Plus got a £100 dividend for keeping the account this year. 

Did a claim for £2000 last month that went through with no quibble.

VXman

jimjames said:

TadleyBaggie said:

It's quite a big jump but it hasn't had an increase for around 7 years. Still worth it for me for the travel insurance and breakdown cover alone.

Absolutely. If you have a joint account it works out even better as both benefit from the features

jimjames said:

TadleyBaggie said:

It's quite a big jump but it hasn't had an increase for around 7 years. Still worth it for me for the travel insurance and breakdown cover alone.

Absolutely. If you have a joint account it works out even better as both benefit from the features

Partner is covered for breakdown anyway, and whole family covered for travel insurance.so no need for joint account particularly.

mathew1971

Not great when I just paid for Aviva medical upgrades in July that were covered for free with UK insurance. Claimed for a damaged phone and excess was £75😲 - hardly worth it tbh as phone was only worth £200. All in all the product is more expensive and depending on your circumstances you may be able to get better by shopping around.

bagand96

£5 a month increase seems a bit steep, I get what they say about keeping it as low as possible for as long as possible but I might  have expected a more incremental increase than 38%

Will be shopping around as this might make the account uncompetitive for my own circumstances. Remember the good old days when it has an enhanced interest rate for the first £x000 balance which offset the monthly fee! 

As it happens I recently got a Virgin Money ISA which required opening an unused current account so their M Club is an option (accepting they could increase their own price as they now look cheap, and will end up part of of Nationwide anway!) 

Katiehound

If you are looking for breakdown cover it might be worth looking to see if your existing car insurance has it as an add on. If it does it's very likely to be cheaper than bought direct standalone cover.
There are cheaper companies than RAC & AA (but I have only been member of these 2 as mainly bought with insurance.)
what does this site recommend?

WillPS

Katiehound said:

If you are looking for breakdown cover it might be worth looking to see if your existing car insurance has it as an add on. If it does it's very likely to be cheaper than bought direct standalone cover.
There are cheaper companies than RAC & AA (but I have only been member of these 2 as mainly bought with insurance.)

Not in my experience - if you're not wanting RAC/AA (and there are good reasons why you might, like covering recovery with dogs) you can get a fairly comprehensive standalone policy from providers like 2gether for about £20/year (I got this price via Comparethemarket.com, it's more on their own website).

subjecttocontract

For older people, the focus is often the travel insurance element when deciding if a packaged bank account meets their needs. I can get an add on breakdown cover for about £30 with my car insurers but it's the bank travel insurance that makes the package worthwhile.

maniacmartin

I have the FlexPlus solely for the breakdown cover as I already have travel insurance through other accounts.

The breakdown cover also covers motorcycles which I suspect other providers’ policies don’t - it’s often not mentioned so you have to read the small print. If I have to get cover for my bike and car separately elsewhere than the new FlexPlus price might still be worth it for me.

M.A.S.H_2

This has put me in a bit of a pickle; I am flying to Dubai at the end of September. I upgraded my FlexDirect to FlexPlus on the 2nd of September. I was debating with myself about what would be the best choice and decided to go with this instead of getting a single trip policy for me and my partner.

Can I downgrade back to FlexDirect after the trip? I was okay with the £13 a month, but not so much with £18. I know it has nothing to do with when I signed up, but it feels like the rug was pulled out from under me. I really hate monthly fees at the best of times.