If you have money invested, you might not get it back (Nationwide Building Society)

Member Name: Tony Attwood

Product:	Nationwide Building Society
Date:	10/12/07 (288 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Zero

Disadvantages: You can't always get your money when you want it

Today I found it necessary to present myself at the offices of the Nationwide Building Society in order to withdraw a certain amount of the readies to pay for the Xmas shopping.

Their nearest branch to my house stands in the heart of Corby's Bohemian quarter. If you threw a brick from its entrance, apart from being arrested you would be certain to disable some up and coming post-modern oboist or an avant garde porn broker. It is the sort of place where you can meet the worst novelists ever to degrade the English language; the sort of person who will take 30 minutes to explain exactly how they wrote their last volume when in fact all that is needed is an abject apology.

This then was the area in which I duly presented myself to close my account. But all was not straightforward for my demand was met with puzzlement, a frequent pressing of computer keys, phone calls, offers of a chair, frowns, calls across the room, and a repeated shaking of the shoulders. For my part there was my natural clam, until after 45 minutes I gave in to a light pounding of the knuckles on a desk which bore the legend, "do not pound your knuckles on this desk."

My disregard of the instruction however had an effect. A manager was called. He was a short, spotty fellow who pulsated in, around and out of his suit at random, as if the Big Bang, having made the supernova, gas giants and galactic whirlpools had had a certain amount of material left over, and rather than throw it away had tried to make someone who could in 5 billion years or so arise from the amoebic soup and work as a butcher's shop relief delivery boy - but had not yet been able to get the parts of the bike out of his pocket.

Pausing only to compose a couple of Christmas motets on the desktop I made my demands, and when he was unable to provide the dosh I wanted I asked for a copy of this organisation's official complaints form which was widely advertised in the lobby. There was a certain amount of scrabbling, a confusion over keys, the opening of desks, the gnashing of the teeth, and a wail of "we don't seem to have any here, would you wait for another hour or two while I go and look?" I declined the offer.

Within hours a second manager was presented. She was one of those robust, dynamic young women with the muscles of a welter-weight and a voice like a squadron taking off from flight command but not quite making it over the air traffic control tower. She had the demeanour of one who, while out beetroot picking in the brighter areas of north London, has just caught the 8.24 St Pancreas to Brussels Midi between the shoulders.

I opened the debate by pointing out that my experience thus far of the Nationwide reminded me of the activities of the conman who helped Cherie Blair buy houses in Bristol, Sir Mark Thatcher, the canoeist who recently came in from the cold, Lord Archer and Sir Anthony Blunt. It was not, I suggested, an honourable and well-run emporium.

"Sir," she replied. The entire clientele of the society looked around. It was a voice that should other sources of revenue dry up, would enable her to make a living warning the whales that get beached half way up the River Thames that they should turn around and head back to Southend. I made a riposte, but I feel it is best not to place it on record here. One has to answer reptiles when such people speak but one is not obliged to be bright and cheery.

The essence of our chat was that she could not give me my money as she had not been trained, and the only person who might know what to do could not be found. I gave her my compliments and left.

Upon returning to my home I decided to look up the Nationwide Building Society web site. It says that one should phone an 0845 number if one has a complaint. From what I've observed generally the captains of finance don't like to speak to us mortals who lend them our money. When they have downed the first half dozen gins and tonic (usually by 10.30am) and stroked the office cat once or twice to show their human touch they relapse into a coma from which they only emerge to order additional drink.

Thus I was not expecting to reach a top man. But in retrospect I realise I was foolish to make the call for if there is one thing which gives a man of artistic sensitivity such as myself a dead feeling from the knee upwards, it is the voice of an arctic grouse from the icy wastelands of call centre land who has undoubtedly had his internal organs removed and replaced with triple A batteries.

Such it was that I now confronted. "I want my money," I said. "But given the attitude of the office staff in Corby I have started to believe that it is missing."

"On how many cylinders?'' asked the grouse. Clearly it was the policy of the building society to engage a little ribald conversation before settling down to the serious matter of the day.

My emotion at this moment was that so much ineptitude could not have been assembled within one organisation. Even a labour politician of dubious intellectual coverage, considering whether to accept a donation, would have backed up for a moment and returned to his Pease pudding with the feeling that for once, this one ought not to be touched with a barge pole.

But for reasons I cannot explain I pressed on. The Corby branch of the society were unable to process my request, I explained, on the somewhat spurious grounds that I had been the customer of another building society which the Nationwide had taken over some 9 months previously. No one had been trained how to deal with such circumstances. Opening his remarks with a cough that resembled a very old goat that had just escaped from the custody of the American military he proceeded to sound to me rather like a snail taking a look around after eating part of a cabbage that had been in the rain too long.

I will not bore you with details of the subsequent rather lopsided conversation save that it concluded with my saying that the organisation came across as being populated by the sort of people who if not actually dodos themselves are first cousins once removed. It is an organisation that looks and feels as if some down and outs set out to build a replica of a 1950s bookies clip joint but changed their mind at the last moment.

Summary: The worst possible customer service - and they won't give me my money