Nationwide Credit Card

coptheath

I have just received my monthly statement from Nationwide Credit Card and I have been wrongly debited £16.19 for Merchandise Interest.
It took me the best part of an hour to get through to them on Saturday afternoon when I was imediately told that they have a computer glitch which has caused this problem. However as I clear my card fully each month by direct debit I will be debited with the full outstanding balance including the £16.19. If this problem is widespead, as I believe it is, there are several issues :-
1 Nationwide will make significant money from all the amounts debited which shouldn't have been.
2 If I had not spotted this error would it have been corrected?

Butlers1982

there are several issues :-

No, there are 2 issues.

Answer to Number one:

No they wont- see the answer to number two.

Answer to Number two:

They were aware of the Glitch, Hence the high number of calls(took you so long to get through) so yes it would have been corrected.

NickX

Butlers1982 wrote: »

Answer to Number one:

No they wont- see the answer to number two.

Yes they will. If the OP has to pay the £16.19 as part of the full monthly payment to ensure no interest is charged, then Nationwide will earn interest from the time that payment is taken until the refund is processed.

Over a large number of accounts, this could make substantial profits for Nationwide.

tincat

Sorry to be a nuisance, but can you please post the number they give you on each statement to call? I'm having a problem from abroad and don't have my statement with me. The number on the card just takes you to an endless hold system.

thefirs

tincat wrote: »

Sorry to be a nuisance, but can you please post the number they give you on each statement to call? I'm having a problem from abroad and don't have my statement with me. The number on the card just takes you to an endless hold system.

The statement phone number will be a non-geographical one, so hence your difficulty. Some overseas telecom authorities accept the extra costs of such inward calls to the UK, others simply bar them.

But try 01268 567213 for a Nationwide credit card with acknowledgment to SAYNOTO0870.COM for the information.

ngdragon

this seems to explain my post about the problems in getting through to their (no) call centre

I spoke to someone else at Nationwide who claimed to have no knowledge of the 'merchandise interest' item- perhaps they are trying to keep it quiet!

Whatever this is totally unacceptable- They appear to be be taking our money without explanation and not letting us contact them to query it.

Is there any way of co-ordinating complaints?

ngdragon

spoke to someone in my branch today- they were only told about this widespread problem yesterday even though the problems must have been apparent from at least last Saturday!

I was assured that they would not be taking the merchandise interest from my direct debit.

For goodness sake why didn't they put a notice on their website or a message on their phone line to inform us about this problem?

MarkyMarkD

copheath I'm not sure why you are so bothered that Nationwide is making "significant" money.

But if 1 million customers were charged £16.19, and it was taken from them one month and (effectively) refunded the next, Nationwide would make a lot less than £100,000 in interest, which is a trivial amount to an organisation of Nationwide's size.

ngdragon

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

But if 1 million customers were charged £16.19, .

They were going to charge me twice that............plus what they have made on phone calls with customers waiting an hour or more to get through..............

They could have handled this so much better

MarkyMarkD

Yes, they'll have made loads of money having to pay staff overtime to answer all the queries. It's not like call centres routinely have hundreds of staff there ready to deal with thousands of extra calls.

Really, people do get things out of proportion.

NickHo

I have been charged interest too despite having always cleared off my balance by direct Debit. Looks like NW has bitten off more than it can chew. Its not been the same since they took over the Portman Building society in my view. the staff morale is now very poor. When do we get a chance to vote on the top management?