Nationwide Reviews 

The politeness and quickness of the young man. Who has not been there that long.

Nationwide used to be a great British institution, an alternative to the big corporate banks whose avarice blew up the world economy not so long ago and left all of us footing the bill: a building society that treated its members fairly and was accountable to them. Sadly this is no longer the case and Nationwide is a big bank in all but name.

It’s not the place here to recount the changes management have foisted on Naionwide in recent years, the abuse of its democratic processes or the scandal that has surrounded the eye-watering bonus payments made to multi-millionaire chief executive, Debbie Crosby.

Nor shall I describe the bureaucratic nightmare of being locked out of online access to my own accounts for months due to bizarre “money laundering” suspicions that were never substantiated or explained but quietly (and thankfully) dropped.

I only wish to relate my experience of its appalling standard of customer service and how this has declined since I joined.

Telephone customer service was once a free number you could call and get straight through to a staff member who would try to solve your problem. Now, after a tedious security process with an unreliable app, almost every call to the telephone line leaves me feeling frustrated, insulted and drained.

It’s as if staff are being trained to be unhelpful in order to deter you from phoning (so they can be laid off and their wages added to Crosby’s next bonus as “efficiency savings” perhaps?) Staff have no empathy or discretion and policies funnel you relentlessly back to Nationwide’s clunky digital services, which are often broken. Even if you specifically tell them (as I did today) that you already tried to do something online and it didn’t work you will be cajoled into rolling your boulder up that hill again.

If this is what the call centre is now, they should stop calling it “customer service” but “customer management”. It is like the person standing by the self-checkouts at Lidl who shouts at you when you scan something upside down.

And stop pretending to be different from any other soulless financial megacorp.

I applied for a credit card on 1st Aug. After 2 weeks I've reported I hadn't received the card. They said they would send another one but still haven't received it on 24 Aug. Two days ago I received the PIN letter but not yet the card. It is almost the end of the month. In 3 days I will go on holiday and I still don't have the card! Horrendous experience by chat on 13-08-2026. Completely resolved by the phone with one of the credit card team members on 25-08-2026 around 17:30.
I would like to thank very much to this lady for her help and in the future I will use the phone for any issue and not the chat.

Nationwide BS seems to have some very good accounts for banking and savings

I opened an account for my Son when he was born,(now 32), he had not used his account so the Nationwide closed it and he needed to go in and withdraw the money(he lives in Australia), spent nearly an hour of his valuable family time sorting this out in July, but the money has still not been paid. Now they won't speak to me data protection and he is 9000 miles away, it is only £71.06 not a vast amount!!!!
This happened on 13th July 2026 and still no further, just done another 40 mile round trip to chase it up but they will not speak to me (mum) at same address as they have on file.
What a joke

The staff at Nationwide are always extremly helpful, patient and kind, i have been with nationwide as a customer for many years and have always had very good customer service.
Thankyou!

Great Service and very experienced customer service team

Queries efficiently dealt with.
So much easier to talk to a person face to face.

I was dealt with straight away & efficiently & was given all the answers clearly to any questions!

Fantastic service. Applied for a switch from Santander. Offered a Flex account, credit card and a savings account. Local High St branches, staffed by courteous knowledgable individuals and I've never waited longer than a couple of minutes when ringing a branch. Try doing that with Santander!!
Best move for me in a long time, go for it.

Very knowledgable staff on branch, just not much privacy as all enquiries dealt with by two adjacent counter staff, dealing with a long queue of people.

Nationwide good place to have your banking needs

I am disabled and they are very helpful and mindful of a disabled person's needs

Absolutely Fantastic building Society. With the Best Staff, First Class in everything. I would not move from Nationwide if you paid me as I like to see and talk to the people who look after our money and you can build a relationship with them. Which is Brilliant ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️25 out of 10

Always friendly helpful staff

It is so very nice to be able to go into a branch and speak to advisor. Thankyou Nationwide for keeping branches open.