Nationwide nightmare with bereavement team and inaccurate figures and no support

Rebby

Hey all

My uncle has been having a really horrific time with the Nationwide and their bereavement and complaints team.
His wife died earlier this year, all he wanted to do was to sort out accounts and, as she wanted,  move her money into his name and accounts.
My auntie didn't have a will, but as the amounts weren't big there should have been no problems in transferring the money over to him.
The local branch have been very helpful - they never had anything apart from branch accounts (nothing online etc) and were used to going into the branch to sort out any queries.

I could go on for days here as to what has happened, but I'll keep it (kind of) short.

The bereavement team have over the last 5 months provided (at least) 5 different sets of figures has to how much was in each account when my auntie died, plus different amounts of interest and final amounts at date of death.

2 complaints have been lodged.  My uncle settled the first one in September when he was assured that the figures would be sent out and corrected.  It was the week of his wedding anniversary (would have been 53 years) and he was very upset about 3 months of phone calls and going into the branch to get figures sorted so settled the complaint with them as he believed them and thought this would be final and he would get some resolution and peace from it all.  I think it was around £200 they offered him.  At this point there were multiple visits to the branch and phone calls to the bereavement team.

The figures which were then sent out were wrong.  He has been chasing up the bereavement team and the complaints team ever since.  In total now he is at the 5th set of figures being sent to him with each set being different.  The figures being sent to him are from a template without any information as to how the figures have been calculated.  Also as it's from a template there are no names or contact details as to where the info has come from and he has no one to contact about the figures.

He is so stressed by it all.  Everyone he speaks to says they will sort things out, but nothing is sorted and no one phoned him back.  I think he's phoned them or has been in the branch over 20 times now.  
He also hasn't had any sort of proper explanation as to what has happened and is so worried about what other people might come up against and how their figures may be incorrect but they would not check like he has that they are right.  In amongst all the stress etc he is worried about other people and what they might be up against and how he can help this not happen to anyone else!  Such a great man!

They are now pushing for him to close the complaint as they are saying that the correct figures have been sent to him.  But they are not explaining the figures no matter how much he asks them to.  So he has no idea whether the final, final, final, final, final version they are claiming is correct.

He just wants everything settled and sorted.  He's not sleeping because of this all and has become physically unwell, feeling sick, not eating or sleeping because of the stress and has lost weight through not eating and stress.  He tells them this but can't get final explained figures from them which would be an easy thing surely for a bank to provide.  His daughter is also suffering because of it all - she's not sleeping due to the worry over her father and all that is happening.

Can anyone advise what he can do next?
He can't get figures or explanations from them as to what is going on.
What can he ask specifically to get an explanation of what has went on?

The Nationwide should be helping him in this tough time.  They have a specialist bereavement team who should be using their knowledge and experience to provide accurate figures, but this seems to be an impossible ask.

Thanks for any help or advice anyone can provide.

p00hsticks

I'm a bit confused as to why he appears to need / be requesting figures rather than just asking that the money be transferred over to him - are the sums involved such that they will not release the amounts to him without a Grant of Representation ? 

Savvy_Sue

Also confused because if they weren't doing anything online, surely he must have paper statements from the accounts? The final balance may (should?) be higher than what is shown on each of them, because of interest, but is that not happening? 

His next step would, I guess, be to the Banking Ombudsman, but that isn't going to give quick resolution. 

bobster2

A couple of observations...

While they should of course be able to give balances for the date of death - following this there will never be a final value for the balance until an account is closed because it will continue to receive interest. It's only possible to calculate a final balance during the process of closing an account.

If the amounts are small - such that the bank is willing to release them without probate - why can't he just ask for them to close the accounts and transfer the money to him? At that point he'll get a final value - what he receives.

Rebby

Hey all - thanks for you replies and questions. 
The balance at date of death provided by the Nationwide have all been different.  So the figures which are being given are the amount in the account at date of death, amount of interest due on the account at date of death which creates the final amount if the account would be closed at date of death.  All have been different in some way or another. 
Point in time figures - we just can't get our head around them being different - basics should be there's an amount of money in the account, there is an interest rate, at x date the account would have the original amount plus the interest on it.  
They have release money to him, but the amount is different from the 5 sets of figures the bereavement team have provided to him over the last 4.5 months.
As for the paper statements, he's in his 70s, he and my auntie have banked with them for years and have trusted them with figures.  How he's supposed to know what figures are correct on an account and what interest is paid based on a daily rate (or so we think) when they're providing multiple different statements has been challenging.
He doesn't know what is right and the amount of money quoted to him has varied by a couple of hundred pounds, so not a small amount and very fair of him to request to be be given info on what is going on and how calculations are being made.
All he's looking are final correct figures with a breakdown of how they are calculated.

gm0

If these are all - unambiguously - supposedly balances at the same death date. And 5 different versions.  Then you are clearly into embarrass publicly. Twitter/X. Financial sunday journalist letters column space.  

If the date asked for got mangled in communication via distress, branch staff/rekeying or otherwise - different dates may explain some.  Or people have calculated carried interest manually off system when not yet applied by the computer to an account balance.....but done it wrongly for the type of account (or for the wrong date) - that could explain some of the variants.

Public shaming making it suddenly become much more "urgent" for somebody to check up on this.  Properly.  Intervene. Pay attention to it.  Prioritise it.  Resolve with the customer with some grace (and fact checking).  Its sad that this works and is needed.  But it does seem to.  The bereavement team are rubbish at bank x again story is a hardy perrennial for newspaper journalists.

Clamming up even more and strictly standard responses are a fairly standard outcome for open complaints.  In hole. Stop digging.  They will most likely not engage to explain their latest figures.  

And they will likely close your complaint with a statement saying here it is.  This is our statement of balances. That's what you get.  We are sorry about earlier communication errors blah blah.  Complaint rejected.  £200 for bother and prior poor communication.  We are done - you have option of FOS etc. etc. Complaint closed/deadlock letter.  The end.

And then what - a trip to the FOS may yield months more distress.......delays - submissions by them of the same material.....and nothing that different.  Where are your alternative facts to demonstrate the latest set are in fact wrong.  Kafkaesque as it may seem.  FOS are not going to do much if your argument is "I am now so distressed and don't trust anything they say - they must explain (unspecified) before I will accept this (possibly)".  Not going to happen.  Painful though it is.  He needs to realise this.

Nor is an explanation of their internal processes and IT deficiencies likely to be forthcoming.  Boilerplate apologetic word salad.  

See below.

Suggestion:  If you can bound the calculation (from prior passbooks/statements balances, known interest rates) as to what the numbers should be *close to*. Then perhaps calmer emotional waters can be achieved.  Perspective that the current version is OK or frankly close enough as a manual statement - to be used for the estate task as official from the bank - and life can go on. To asking for closing accounts - interest written up balances out and into something else.  Probably not at Nationwide based on what you have said about the broken relationship due to their serial incompetence.  Closing balances are of course different - and higher than as of death date ones.  Not much probably - but not the same as what is being debated now.

With that suggestion - how are we here.  

My suspicion.  With very old and branch product.  Banks have often moved on twice, merged, demerged, changed system 3 times and some ratty old passbook account from 30 years ago - is still lurking with 1000 customers left on a derisory interest rate.  Almost no branch or or other transactions of any kind ever happen.  Passbooks in the files of the elderly. Adding nothing Taking nothing out.  The bank almost forgets they exist - and certainly forget any special little features they may - long ago - have had.  

They certainly don't invest in maintainingg all the old features when replacement technology comes along.....for a dying niche of 1000 accounts.  It would be kinder to bribe or force people off "closing" product and force the issue  than let it decay and entropy rule - as is current practice.

A new system sends some letters different to before.  But it has been bodged in without much care (tiny niche).  Statements used to be better. With suddenly very few places you can now go to get that passbook printed update done. Or they write it in and stamp it with the bankname as theatre.  Because the passbook printers - are no longer a thing. The venerable old account type beloved of 30 years ago is not entirely natively supported on the "new" system now used for current products.  

A savings product which now lives a half life in some ante room to final extinction.   And nobody much cares about or for outside the customer operations where it is franky one of a family of complex old nuisances and generator of complaints out of all proportion to its dwindling importance.  I had some similar issues with a parent with old branch accounts (of branch passbook savings account and ISA type of thing).  And at one point took them and the books to a branch to get several years interest stamped up.  And the experience was so disturbing - I felt I had to overcome their resistance to online savings accounts.  And get the hell out of there. Move this very old stuff off.  

Before I ended up in your situation.  As an executor.  With even longer for entropy to have decayed the banks ability to remember and service it - gone almost entirely from living product memory.   Mine wasn't Nationwide. 

But ALL legacy banks have lots of this kind of stuff lurking.  Because they don't bribe or otherwise chase people off old product for the most part. It just lurks with dwindling numbers.  And corporate memory - isn't sufficient

I suspect a similar scenario may behind the wizard of Oz curtain here. That's what it strongly smells of.   

Incomplete automation.  Rare one off transaction for death date balance - on a niche old customer legacy product.  Something got moved to SAP. Some other things didn't. Some older history is archived with the originals savings account systems long gone. Nothing is linked to the current contact systems - old account numbers, new account numbers - much noise of that sort.    A branch only - never online customer - may not properly exist on what now passes for customer systems meant to tie it all up together.  Once upon a time all banks were just piles of accounts - some of them passbooks.  No idea about customer holdings across them. But that was 1990 world.  Not today.  

When processes are little exercised for that particular product type. It's IT visibility and migration of history - potentially lacklustre.  Looking in more than one place to gather data. The specific horror show doesn't much matter.  The type of issue is quite common for banks that failed to tidy up or bought a failing one that hadn't tidied up and now own their mess. The issue being little known (to staff in general) bar a handful of veterans. And the resolution of any query is festooned with multiple IT access needs and several manual workarounds.  

Workflow then gets botched by an undertrained back office type - just failing to realise it's "one of these" particular ones.  And practically no visiblity for customer service or in branch specifically of much of it.  Workflow status, contact or the data around the request. Or the complaint.

By the way as it goes - I know nothing about Nationwide's specific IT.  But I do know about several other legacy banks. And this is what it smells of.  Older and merged banks are sadly full of horrific old stuff like this.  Shortcuts taken 10 years ago. Causing operational problems now for products designed 30 years ago with almost nobody left on them and not business case to spend money automating them.  Take the damn creature behind the barn

They don't do "dirty linen" in public explanations.  I don't think you will get far with your quest for explanation.

It's close enough (for purpose).  Or it's not.

Then you close the accounts and move on.  Further dialogue will be an exercise doomed to bitter frustration.

gm0

Seen your other reply.  You have the money.  Urgency from their perspective has evaporated.  Fob off protocol to be implemented.

They very likely don't know at this point to ultimate detail - how a series of back office people fluffed the manual statement calculation and its comms.  

May well have the sent to customer manual output which is usually kept by most banks for most stuff.  But not all steps the staff member took - off system - to get to it.  

They will (or should) know who did it each time.  But months on - no chance they remember anything about it even if they still work there.  Hopeless.  System records as exist - are what they have.

Without them attempting to make the various possible mistakes AGAIN and so regenerate the same numbers.  
But the accounts are now closed.  The systems don't look exactly like they did when the errors happened.  That may now make the task - trickier to recreate.  And less worthwhile.

So what happens now.  You have the 5 templates. Likely so do they.

Post account close - they won't view recreation of past errors as a sensible thing to do at all.  Pay you off for inconvenience. Sorry not sorry - thus my prediction of what the complaint handling will be.   

They may have records/worksheets attached to a completed workflow item showing the 5. 

So somebody looked at the wrong account (next one on a screen) wrong figure. Used the wrong date, used the wrong rate - while doing something manually.  Rekeyed some data badly and flipped a digit.  Or combos of those things to generate particular odd figures.

Absent super detailed records practically videos of their staff working doing manual work arounds. They could attempt to "guess" and recreate it to fake up a possible explanation now. Some of the five might be "classics" of getting interest roll up wrong and easily spotted.  Others not so much.

But they really really don't want to go and do that.  With a high risk of getting that wrong.  It's not what happened. It's what could have.  You already have the money.  What is the point.  

Your dad wants them to run around and satisfy him in detail about it. They won't.  And maybe they *cannot* - now underpin the manual statements with a layer of detail that is what happened rather than what might have

Someone (possibly new and under trained) with fairly dodgy system access to data in terms of clarity - did it manually and fluffed it up.  Creating a figure then keyed into a manual template. And sent it out.  This got flubbed independently and repeatedly by several such. Whether all the errors were the calc, or the communication of the request - is another thing where it could have gone awry. 

The cause of the manual handling - the reason the poor child in back office in their confusion was doing it all.  The lack of automation to just push a button and have this spat out by the computer as a customer letter. Is in my longer post.  A cause which has not and will not be addressed for a dying product. At this point.

The end.

Even if they say - why thank you for pressing this issue.  Very serious. We will most certainly investigate root cause and do something to prevent this happening again to others.  They won't really solve it beyond lip service.  Nor will they share with you what they are doing about it.

Basically it's already on a very long list of things to sort out and automate. And will never reach the top of the annual work list - with its tiny and reducing customer counts - the lowest of low priority items.  

Some light bodging of the manual process / training / process document - is the most that will happen.  And something for the bereavement team call handlers to detect this particular "known problem".  That's about all most banks would do to strap some sticky plaster on it.  Attempt to reduce the frequency of error for occasions when one of these old accounts is handled manually for that process.  

And if it was Steve who was drunk after lunch and got it wrong creatively all 4 times.  Disciplinary.

Press them some more if it makes you feel good. 
But not if it makes you feel bad.  

They won't be that bothered.

You will probably have had more explanation here than you will ever get from Nationwide.  If they surpise you positively - do let us know.

Emmia

How much (approximately) is the amount of money involved that your uncle is seeking to have transferred?

A few hundred, a couple of thousand... More than £10k? More than that?

jackieblack

I feel your pain - I also found Nationwide the most difficult/inefficient of all the banks/building societies to deal with when dealing with my late parents affairs

sheslookinhot

How much is the difference between the lowest final figure and the highest final figure that was given by Nationwide on account closure ?

Rebby

Hello all

Thanks again - lots of info there!
The account was a fixed rate bond.  So it had a start date, a fixed term and rate of interest.  The original amount which was quoted to my uncle was £500 more than the next figure given, so you can see how he would like information as to figures.  He would just like to know how the figures were calculated so he can be confident that they are right this time.  Previous calculations he's not interested in, he just wants to know how the final latest figures has been.