Nationwide customers find online front door shut
It pays to decide to go outside and find a branch
Posted in Management, 7th February 2011 13:26 GMT
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Nationwide Building Society customers looking to check their accounts or peruse mortgage rates via its online front door were left frustrated today as its website's front page told them it was, er, too busy.
Customers typing in nationwide.co.uk today were greeted with the following:
Server is too busy
The front page seems to be worst affected. A web search for other pages such as banking log-on or interest rates will take you direct to the relevant page.
However, some customers who have accessed online banking have reported problems getting out again, with attempts to log out serving up a proxy error.
A spokesman for the firm said it was aware of the problems and its technical team was trying to get to the bottom of them. He could not say when normal service was likely to be restored.
The firm is in the middle of changing its log-on procedure for online banking, but the spokesman could not say if today's problems were anything to do with that project, saying "We don't know as of yet what the issue is".
Reg readers complained last week of problems getting onto Nationwide.co.uk. However, the spokesman said it had had no reports of any problems last week. ®
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COMMENTS
2 factor authentication...
... is something we're all going to have to get used to. Banking trojans are getting very sneaky. Not that 2FA is infallible, but online bank fraud losses are accelerating to the point at which a certain amount of user inconvenience is inevitable. If you want something to truly complain about, save it for 3-D Secure.
Nationwide in my experience seem particularly prone to treating their customers/members like chldren but in this case it just means that they're doing something now that all the rest, who are still agonising about customer resistance, will almost certainly be doing shortly.
no change then
Nationwide's site is always slow, even when it is working normally. And it has too many stupid rules about what characters and values it will accept in password and 'memorable data' fields.
Doesn't know what it is yet...
...what, no Indian translators on-hand?
Possibly the consequence of another quality outsourcing decision...and an omen of things to come, given the big banks recent hard-ons for costs, rather than service quality?
Been fine with me
I've used Nationwide for years (among others) and I've never really had a single problem relating to their service! Other banks/Building societies refuse to accept my browser, crash all the time, have unnecessarily complicated login procedures (does it really improve security to have to enter your details on multiple pages? I think not), whereas Nationwide have been consistantly perfect throughout my time of using them. The online banking is simple but effective and I like that (hence I'm not a Mac luser).
El Reg is being a bit harsh...
HSBC
Also, annoyingly, even though they supply a SecureID token for secure login, they keep pushing some third-party add-on to 'keep your computer secure'. I wouldn't mind but it's been going on for months now and I keep forgetting to use my Linux box to avoid that screen.
So to log in it's:-
User ID
Password
SecureID token
'It looks like you are trying to login, do you want us to stuff it up for you?'
Doesn't say much for how they rate their own security
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