Used to be good - but effected by the credit crunch (Nationwide Building Society)

Member Name: kjmccabe

Product:	Nationwide Building Society
Date:	21/10/09 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap to take money out abroad

Disadvantages: Bad communication

I banked with Nationwide since I was a child (i am now in my late twenties) and have never had a problem with them up until about 2 years ago, or the beginning of the 'credit crunch'.

Basically my situation was as follows:

I had a credit card with them with about £1000 on it which I was paying off at a reasonable rate of £50 a month, plus a current account with an overdraft of £650, which I was usually well into by the end of the month (the joys of recovering from being a student in London eh)

Anyhow, you can imagine my dispair when I arrived home one day to a letter telling me that my overdraft was being cancelled - IN 3 WEEKS! and i had to pay it back in full - was not impressed and called them and they said there was nothing they were willing to do about it. To be honest I had the money in savings to pay the overdraft off but just liked the security of having it - so I promptly paid it off and swtiched accounts to another bank who have been brilliant - I understand that they wanted to cut the overdraft but my issue was the terrible service I recieved and limited time I had to pay it back - If my situation had have been different and I was unable to pay it back - I would have found myself in a lot of trouble.

I still have an account with them for my credit card and to be honest I have had no real problems with them, it is paid off now and I just keep it for security really, who knows, this could be different if I was actually using them.

Their internet banking site is not as good as some of its competitors though - there has been a new system in place whereby some of the main UK banks have cut the amount of processing time for those transfering money, i.e it only takes 2 hours if someone transfers money into your account. My housemate and I have tried this between our banks and it does work, in fact 90% of the time it is there in an instant, however Nationwide does not offer this service and you end up having to wait for 3 says before anything clears in your account - something they are defintely lagging behind on.

On the plus side, as long as youre in credit, there are no fees to have a nationwide account, and I believe they offer competitve rates on taking money out when you are abroad - which is why I kept my account open with them

Summary: Handy to have but not as a main account