Macbear

Last month I had to re-state my wish to have paper statements - quite a fight to get that done online with their bot which is next to useless. However, it was confirmed by a human "agent" that my preference would remain in force. Today, an email stating that my accounts are going paperless. So try to complain with online banking, but that wretched bot fails to allow a complaint to be made. So, phone the number given on the email. Jump through the hurdles only to be confronted with an instruction to put in the first digit of my "telephone banking" password. I have no such thing. No chance of a human to talk to.
So, I'll have to do a 10 mile round trip to call in at a branch. Is this environmentally friendly?
Is personal banking in a race to the bottom? Nationwide's "thick as mince" approach is not a shadow of the former standards.

Even though Elixir might not recognise my Trustpilot name, it would have been an indicator of customer care if Elixir had responded to a review I wrote 20 days ago. Emailing me with a link to review on Trustpilot seems unfortunate. I have not changed my rating and hope that Elixir don't treat customer reviews merely as a box-ticking exercise.

I'm getting increasingly fed up with several faults with eBay.
1. saved searches gives me a daily update on "new" postings. Why is it that totally irrelevant items appear - if I want to look at Egyptian stamps the intrusion of photographic backdrops in quantity occurs?. This has been brought up in feedback, but nothing has changed.
2. some traders are a pain and it would be good if I could block them. There are some that list a couple of hundred "new" items per day- often at inflated prices. Others repeatedly misdescribe items e.g. common collectibles labelled "rare" which is timewasting.
3. sellers put pressure to review experiences as, it seems that unless a buyer completes a review within a very short time of the item's estimated delivery, eBay delay payment to the seller. With Royal Fail sometimes taking way too long over delivery this is neither in the interest of the seller or the buyer.
4. eBay pester buyers to pay a.s.a.p.. This is annoying when a seller and buyer have agreed that an invoice for a combined sale of several items takes several days between the first to last item being sold.
This is sad that decent sellers and buyers are being poorly served by what used to be a decent market place.

Home buildings insurance was up for renewal. I decided to shop around following comments on the MSE website about prices being down by 10%, but some insurers raising premiums again.
As my LV quote was over 10% more with "auto-renewal" I hoped to give them a second chance through their website. No good, and as I was paying by credit card a phone call to terminate once the period of cover was ended wasn't exactly convenient either.
So I've bought similar cover elsewhere at less than my previous year's premium. I didn't buy "cheaper" insurance, I wanted the same features.
To be fair to LV I got an email advising me that my cover was due to expire the next day. Then another email a few days later confirming the expiry. I was concerned that the continuous Credit Card authorisation would not have been cancelled by them despite my phone contact earlier, but LV have honoured that.
Sad. I have never made a claim for buildings in almost 50 years and have been with LV for quite a few, so they lost what must be a low-risk customer.

Next day delivery. The item was very competitively priced. I was baffled by the boxed item being put inside a much larger box, though.

I ordered a couple of items on Bank Holiday. I could have picked up similar at a local garden centre and within 2% a similar price, but felt more loyalty towards Elixir based on previous good experiences.
A few hours after placing the order I had an email offering "Bank Holiday Savings! Big Discounts" - a shame that had not arrived earlier! My order was early afternoon, the email late afternoon: not much left of the Bank Holiday by then.
The first part of my order arrived two days later. Emails to herald delivery. Good.
The second part took much longer to arrive. Courier just appeared, nothing to say it was coming. Unpacking it, the items were very dusty - had they sat around for a long time or is the warehouse simply neglected? Oh dear.
Will I choose Elixir over my local garden centre with similarly priced items in future? Maybe not.

Used Moneysupermarket to find quotes for home buildings insurance. The Swinton Classic ticked my boxes and the price was competitive. Proceeded seamlessly through the Swinton site and it asked me to read various documents and tick to confirm that I had done so - nothing unusual there - except a message saying that document generation had failed. I was effectively blocked. Such a shame as I was willing to pay the premium there and then.
No. I have no intention of phoning them up tomorrow as I've done enough of the running.
One thing for sure. If Swinton's website is faulty at this point in proceedings it doesn't bode well. I will look elsewhere. I face the faff of jumping through all the hoops again. Hopefully a competitor will prove more efficient and customer friendly.

YG recently had a problem with its daily review feature. This is one of the best features of this company, even though some of the topics may seem a little tongue on cheek or not something I find close to my life. They acknowledged the problem and have re-started it. Well done.
The point-yielding surveys seem rather fewer these days. Sad, as though some are very good, even the commercial ones dealing with goods and services I do not have much interest in are a window on the world.
Unfortunately, the feature where members allow access to their online activities, seems a tad too intrusive for my liking.

Sadly, what Nationwide seem to offer as "customer-led improvements" to online banking experience seems to be a backward step.
The old feature of "accounts overview" seems to have been removed. This allows inspection of all transactions for about a month. Now the latest statement [could be almost a month out of date] or only a few very recent transactions are accessible. Pretty useless if one is trying to keep tabs to avoid tampering from bad actors.
Another thing is the introduction of a bot triage. Gone is the easy access to messaging with account queries. Typical bot: it is very limited, and unless the customer knows the exact phrases or terms for an enquiry it seems a complete waste of time.
Wake up, and recognise that this "improvement" based on customers whose experience seems alien to mine is flawed.
The good side: my accounts seem to have been run efficiently and it's good to have a couple of payments labelled "interest" which are "Thankyou" and "Fair share" bonus payments for simply being a member.

Until this morning I didn't know that two Evri couriers shared deliveries to my home. I met Nigel this morning, who has quietly been delivering to us without us realising [we have only met Will]. They clearly have had professional conversation about the details of each address as their style of delivery is seamlessly perfect. Look after them, please, Evri, they are of the best you will ever employ.

My wife, who has had no dealings with this company, or [knowingly] with Experian who apparently supplied her data to them, received a mailshot in the post. These people don't know us from Adam, let alone whether or not their timing is going to cause upset. Would we trust them to carry out out last wishes? Certainly not.

What entitles Experian to sell data to other companies? My wife has never knowingly had any dealings with them, yet they passed her data to a cremation company who sent a mailshot. Absolutely disgraceful, and what potentially insensitive material!

I joined the MSE Forum a while back and am intrigued by the issues raised by members and the range of replies given by other "Forumites".
Some issues are moral dilemmas. Some involve legal matters. Sadly, some Forumites seem to be underqualified to give advice, but others are well informed. Issues raised are often ones I had never thought about - including legal entitlements others may have over your property [even when that is freehold].
Well worth joining the Forum, but keep eyes open!

It seems a very mixed bag. A couple of good experiences with sellers who admitted that what I received was not exactly what I should have done. Neither was so serious that I would have asked for a return or a refund - although one gave me a refund. A third seller blamed me for not asking a question to clarify what was an ambiguous description. Sadly, his review wasn't positive from me.
About 99% of my transactions are positive and there are some really decent, human sellers out there.
What I really dislike, though, is "private listing - bidder identity protected". It feels shady. On one occasion I was outbid by one of those, but at the last minute the bid was withdrawn without any proper explanation. More recently, 3 such bidders have seemingly bid ridiculously for an item. What is going on - is this a cover for money laundering? Most bidders have an identity - even if it is just a series of letters/numbers and you get used to your rivals. Our identities are protected, but "private listing" looks suspect.

I wanted to do a price comparison before accepting Saga's quote, but as this arrived months before the policy was due to expire making a comparison wasn't available.
By the time I got around to it I learned that it is common practice to quote different prices according to the number of days before a renewal date. My Saga quote showed as being expired, but it was more favourable than any alternative. So I phoned Saga and was pleased to hear that the quote was still valid as I had opted for continuous credit card authorisation. I was still able to amend one clause with a modest adjustment to the price.
My only reservation: I learned from comparison websites that insurers value a vehicle at trade price - so in the event of a write off there is a significant difference between what the cost of a replacement and the payout. Saga were unable/unwilling to tell me what the value of my car is on the policy.

What cheek these are! There are some transactions which I have been less than happy about, but not enough to leave a negative review of the seller. For example, one seller advertised combined postage, but when it came to it they charged only slightly less than full postage for each item - yet the actual postage cost was exactly the same as it would have been for a single item. So they ripped me off. However, as the items were decent and at a sensible price I took it on the chin, but decided not to buy from them again.
I now discover that if no feedback is left eBay mark the feedback as being positive. What a swindle. This massages experience to make out that user satisfaction is better than it actually is.

As stamp collector, I'm a potential buyer: I joined, attracted by eBid seeming to be an alternative to eBay and Delcampe. Over a few years I have bought very little - the reason: the same tired items listed by the same sellers time and again. Those items clearly are not selling. That is a reflection on the volume and quality on offer. The website is fair enough, but the stock reminds me of a faded little corner clothes shop with window displays that haven't changed for years. Very sad.

I value Trustpilot reviews - how others have fared with a business contributes to my decision as to whether or not I consider that business.
Something puzzling has cropped up, though. I've been invited to write reviews for businesses I have not had dealings with. It may be that my wife has used them, but it is strange that they have tracked my Trustpilot account down.
Come on Trustpilot, are you giving access to my account based on what is a shared email address? If so, please stop that, as it's "iffy".

I cleared out all my Premium Bonds earlier in the year to enable a "bank of dad" gift. As other fixed term savings reached maturity I decided to return to PBs as an easy access stash. I can't say my experience of "prize money" compares too well with regular returns on other savings and investments, but the easy access is good and is free from income tax.
The withdrawal earlier in the year was painless.
I did wonder if my account number and password would still work, but they did and it was pretty straightforward using my bank debit card to transfer money.
To have instant acknowledgement of my transaction is also positive.

Overall I'm happy with Nationwide and have had an account for some 38 years [was with Anglia BS for part of that time]. Pretty good service, but today I wanted to start up another regular savings account as last year's finished last month. I'm blocked because I have not given them my mobile phone number. That's hardly surprising as I haven't got one! Is that the best way to do business, or is Nationwide aping other financial institutions who don't seem to want personal customers?

I submitted feedback as invited, and had a landline call on 7 October. To verify my identity I was asked for about half a dozen details - odd since Nationwide had rung me. Then I learned that what I had submitted was a complaint , I protested that it was "feedback" following their own suggestion.
It seems that policymakers at Nationwide imagine all customers have smartphones and that dinosaurs like me count for nothing. Result, I'm setting up a monthly payment to a different financial body for savings. I know when my custom isn't wanted.