Nationwide can't tell me what's happening

Bernard_Coleslaw

A little peeved with Nationwide BS at the moment. We've had our Flexaccount with them for about 12 years, and by and large they've been very good.

I checked our balance online yesterday and noticed that there was a considerable difference between the account and available balance. The available balance was some £252 lower than the account balance.

"Simple," I hear you say, "there must be some debit card transactions on their way through. The funds have been reserved and the account balance will be updated soon."

Only we can't account for this. We know of about £18 of it, but other than that neither of us have used our debit cards at all recently, and certainly not for £230-odd!

So I rang NW yesterday afternoon. Could they tell me what this reserved amount was? How many transactions, from where, and from how much.

And they couldn't. I should wait to see if the transaction comes through properly. Until then, there is sweet b-all the NW ("Proud to be different") can do for us - they can't tell us what transactions are waiting to go through. :mad:

I didn't quite believe them so tried again today. Same answer - although they've happily reduced our available balance in response to a merchant putting through debit card transactions, they cannot tell us who, where, when or for how much.

I think it's a bit poor that we've spotted a potential debit card fraud, but our card issuer wants to wait for the transaction to go through before they're able to identify anything.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

dunstonh

There is no way for staff to tell the amount of the earmark. It is not processed at their end.

I was working in a bank when debit cards were first issued and earmarks back then were converted to dollars and then back to sterling and never reflected the real amounts (VISA being an american company and the processing done there). So things are a little better now.

There is nothing that can be done until the transaction comes in. The earmark may auto-expire with nothing ever coming in. A manual earmark may have been mis-processed, a retailer may have initially put a transaction in then cancelled and corrected an amount which then creates two earmarks.

Just keep an eye on the account for a few days. The branch staff will be as much in the dark as you and they are right in what they are saying.

Bernard_Coleslaw

Righto. I must admit, I thought Base 1 transactions showed up separately and could be interrogated.

Will keep an eye on things. These things never seem to happen on those (admittedly rare) occasions when I've got loads in there!

SparciaM

They shoudld be able to give you some information.

When I worked at smile we could see outstanding authorisations, payments done via debit card. Couldn't see who they were to or what they were for, but could see the amount and the date. So if someone's balance was £100 less, I could say that because you have a payment of £60 on the 1st and on of £40 on the 3rd. We could also see which card it was done on, ie if it was a joint account could say that your wife did it on her card.

Atleast then the customer could retrace that date, but that was the most information we could see regarding card payments.

dunstonh

When I worked at smile we could see outstanding authorisations, payments done via debit card. Couldn't see who they were to or what they were for, but could see the amount and the date.

When I was at Lloyds you could just see the total.

PBA

Bernard_Coleslaw wrote: »

I think it's a bit poor that we've spotted a potential debit card fraud, but our card issuer wants to wait for the transaction to go through before they're able to identify anything.

Until any transaction goes through there isn't any fraud and nothing to dispute. Chances are it was an authorisation made in error and will just drop off your account within a few days.

kavomix

When i worked at Natwest it was possible to find out payment amounts

On front office you could ony see that £100 was missing from the available balance but couldn't tell when it had gone out or whom to.

When using back office, which every staff memeber has access to, then on day 0 (day of transaction) you can see the payment amounts, date, time and card used, within 2hrs of the transaction being made. However you couldn't see who to until day 1 (day after purchase)

However it was possible to ring up card authorisation and they could confirm who the payment was to and all the other details on day 0

richardmk

If you are denied access to funds because of the earmarking the Nationwide should offer either to place some money from the suspense account or increase your overdraft.

Mikeyorks

richardmk wrote: »

If you are denied access to funds because of the earmarking the Nationwide should offer either to place some money from the suspense account or increase your overdraft.

Which - if it is fraud - allows the fraudsters a second go at your funds! Unfortunately not all the Banks appear to have realised this yet - but the fraudsters have.

Precisely that happened to my son's account over Christmas. And that despite the card was stopped as soon as unexplained 'reserves' were evident on the account.

Fedz

The Co-op can tell the date and amounts (individual, not total) of pending transactions but, you have to call for the info and the internet control panel won't even reflect pending transactions (balance and available balance always remain the same except for incoming pending, not outgoing pending).

The Halifax are a little better and does reflect pending transactions (difference between balance and available balance).

The best I've found is NatWest.
They (pending transactions) show on internet banking control panel individually but, after approx. 3 days then show who it is but, until then just show the date, amount.
Also this reflects almost instatntly in your balance and available balance.

The former 2 are Visa but, the latter (NatWest) is Solo/Maestro/Cirrius - so not sure if that has any contributing factor to NatWest being better at this than the other 2.