I’ve worked in banking customer service before and from my experience, you are giving people the benefit of the doubt they really don’t deserve. Unfortunately, the people who commit these frauds are usually experts in social engineering - that’s how they got the money in the first place - so they are very good at creating stories that are believable and elicit sympathy. They often manage to convince inexperienced bank staff to unfreeze their accounts for example, with stories of unfed babies or urgent medication needed etc. It’s also generally fairly clear who they are, for one reason are another.
Mostly, they are the same people that have convinced that poor, often vulnerable person to transfer a load of money to them and are in the process of moving it abroad. Successfully freezing it in time often means managing to get it back to those people who its been stolen from - that’s really a good thing.
From my experience, I definitely wouldn’t be leaping to these people’s defence, there’s a lot of people losing a lot of money to these scams that are far more deserving of it.
If a bank closes your account and says they’ll return the funds to the source, and you have no illegitimate dealings you know exactly where the money is going and how to access it again once it’s released. You don’t go out there shouting from the rooftops that Monzo stole your money even though they clearly said they’ve given it back
I would class Nationwide’s app and website as solidly good, it does practically all of the things it needs to decently and without major issues, even if it’s not exciting at all. I can see how it rates highly.
Fair enough. I suppose I am looking more at functionality compared with the others, but I can’t deny that it is easy to use and relatively reliable in comparison with the other banks. On that basis, I suppose I too would rate it highly to friends and family as being dependable and usable.
I would argue the opposite actually. It has a pleasing interface, but the usability and accessibility is not great. Prior to Touch ID and Face ID support, my grandmother would regularly get stuck trying to login as it asks for 3 random characters from her pass phrase, and she only has to miscount one of them a few times to get locked out and have to reset it via the post.
With my nationwide account, I’m prohibited from adding new payees via the app, and instead have to login into online banking, pass through onerous security theatre and dig out the little card reader device just to set up a payee. Then there is the regular maintenance at the weekends that usually last all night, and sometimes up to the early afternoon.
Also, when setting up the open banking features with Monzo, I was forced to go through the website, despite having the app installed. Every time I try to use the easy bank transfer it sends me to the website too. Nationwide blame Monzo, I can’t get anywhere with Monzo to escalate it with them, and the feature apparently works with nationwide correctly with a few other members here.
So in that vain I agree with your initial surprise at their surprisingly high ranking in this area.
With that said, they are one of the more accepting and accommodating of new technology, and tend to be first with support for new hardware and features. They have the best designed iPad app (because it’s not just a blown up iPhone app). They’re the (one of?) only Bank in the U.K. to have an Apple Watch app, and they were first with Apple Pay.
I think it’s a matter of how the question is perceived, and it looks like it’s worded as just whether you would recommend their online services to a friend or family. I can see the types of customer Nationwide have and potentially those who haven’t used other banks (or haven’t in a while) finding it satisfactory enough to recommend them.
My initial opinion was considering the question as being some sort of ranking between the banks having tried most of them. On that basis, I agree that their ranking is surprisingly high and unwarranted, in my opinion.
Now that’s something I can imagine being the case. Much of my U.K. based family have notoriously been loyal to First Direct Nationwide, and most still are. My mum complains all the time about the hassle it is to setup payees and make transfers, but still recommends them to everyone.
She has opened up accounts with Monzo and Starling, and prefers both, but is reluctant to leave Nationwide because she’s been with them her whole life, and I assume because the customer service quality has remained consistent over time, whereas newer companies have a tendency to deteriorate in that aspect quickly as they grow.
I cannot recommend anything but Nationwide to my sister. She needs current account, ISA, credit card, mortgage, under one roof as simple and basic as possible. Too busy with lots of other things to jump across multiple apps and functionality. And all around Nationwide provides a really good package.
I don’t think Nationwide’s online or mobile banking is significantly better or worse than other traditional banks I have accounts with.
But one thing I think is excellent with Nationwide is the quality of their website. Really easy to find information about their products and everything laid out and presented in a pleasant way.
