Flex account, we have been ripping the ar5e out of it.

[Russethouse]

 Is the insurance on offer a blanket policy or would the main account holder have to fill in forms and apply ?

[mint]

[quote user="Cathy"]
We shall be withdrawing all our money from the account this month and next month.  MoneyCorp will be the recipients.


[/quote]

We, too, have been systematically emptying our accounts.  I am just cross that I shall have my card with me in Spain for 6 weeks next month until mid October (whilst I'm on the Camino).

So I shall only have a couple of weeks after my return to keep going to the ATM.

What I plan to do after that is to carry on using my credit card and paying that off every month but the debit card will be left firmly at home.

Not only that, I have noticed that even though I have a £300 daily limit on my card, the most I have been able to withdraw recently is €340.

Please now explain to us the advantages of using MoneyCorp in which to put your money and also whether you can open a MoneyCorp account using your French address.

 

 

[Dog]

The idea that Nationwide management  give an iota is laughable - if you are a Nationwide member just get rid of the lacklustre imbeciles that run our society - they are milking it dry!

 

[AnOther]

[quote user="sweet 17"]I have noticed that even though I have a £300 daily limit on my card, the most I have been able to withdraw recently is €340. [/quote]There is no reason for that from the NW side sweets and I've regularly been getting €350 from my local CA ATM which pays out in 50's which is to be expected with a rate above 1.2. Others I've noticed pay out in 20's, or sometimes a mixture, so could that be why ?

Try €330 next time and see if it only lets you take €320. Notionally, with yesterdays closing ECB rate of 1.2151, you might even scrape €360 [;-)]

[AnOther]

[quote user="Russethouse"]Is the insurance on offer a blanket policy or would the main account holder have to fill in forms and apply ?

[/quote]In common with similar 'benefits' offered by other institutions I would assume it to be automatic however it only covers the primary A/C holder and you have to pay extra for others. Frankly, even for UK residents, it's probably not worth a toss and you could almost certainly do better on the open market. It's certainly no incentive to join NW or to remain with them [:(]

[5-element]

[quote user="AnOther"][quote user="sweet 17"]I have noticed that even though I have a £300 daily limit on my card, the most I have been able to withdraw recently is €340. [/quote]There is no reason for that from the NW side sweets and I've regularly been getting €350 from my local CA ATM which pays out in 50's which is to be expected with a rate above 1.2. Others I've noticed pay out in 20's, or sometimes a mixture, so could that be why ?

Try €330 next time and see if it only lets you take €320. Notionally, with yesterdays closing ECB rate of 1.2151, you might even scrape €360 [;-)]

[/quote]

 

I have experimented extensively with the maximum amount I can withdraw on a given day with my Nationwide debit card. I found that it depends entirely on the current exchange rate. There was a time when 320 euros was not even possible, then 330 was OK, then 340, and at the moment I can withdraw 350, even when the notes are all 20's....except for one which is, obviously, a tenner.

[Doodle]

Sunday and Monday of this week I was able to get €360 from my local CA.

Chris

[Kitty]

Sweets - You can open up an account with MoneyCorp from France - you can scan your passport and other items and send it to them in an email.

They hold your money in a non-interest bearing account (from memory, I recall that up to £50,000 is guaranteed should they go bust) and when you want to change it, you telephone them (even in the evening), answer some security questions and then negotiate the rate of exchange.  There are no charges.  It goes into your French bank account immediately.

If you don't want to keep looking at the rate, you can also ask them to change the money automatically when the rate gets to a certain amount.

They also offer advice about when you should change the money, giving you an idea of why the pound or euro is going up or down.

I started using them this year in order to buy another French property and have been impressed with their service so far.  I don't know what the minimum transferrable amount is.  The biggest problem was that we had to be in the UK to transfer money from our British bank account to MoneyCorp.

I would contact them and ask for some more information.  http://www.moneycorp.com/Contact-us/

[Kitty]

[quote user="AnOther"][quote user="Cathy"]I assume that this one third of customers (a so-called "tiny minority") are worth having as they are likely to be monied.[/quote]I don't follow your logic. Why 'likely to be monied' when a goodly proportion will be using their Flexaccount for nothing more than receiving their pension and drawing it here in Euros and have no significant other funds with NW.

[/quote]

I am not a pensioner neither are, I doubt, are many of their business travellers.  I have always held a substantial sum of sterling in the Flexaccount so that I can draw on it when I want.  As a result of their helpfulness, I recently took out additional services with Nationwide rather than using another bank.

Their policy seems misguided.

I have written to Nationwide.  But from their letter of explanation, it doesn't seem that they will listen.

[Gardengirl]

I still haven't had a reply from Nationwide yet.

About money transfer; we transferred money via a couple of companies when we had staged payments to pay for our apartment purchase three years ago. We were undecided about just when to transfer the next amount and were advised by the company that we might just hold off, as things should be heading upwards. We did hold off. Guess what happened .......... everything everywhere shot downwards, and we rued taking their advice. We didn't lose out a huge amount, but we had our opinion confirmed that nobody, even experts, can know what's waiting round the corner.

[mint]

Bonjour, everybody!

Thank you for your answers to my complaint about the amount I could draw out with my card.

I will try at another ATM than CA's.  At the current rates, I expect to be able to get at least €350.

Cathy, thanks for the info re MoneyCorp.  I don't mind leaving some money with them as interest rates are worth zilch at the moment.

At least you have the convenience of being able to withdraw amounts when the rate suits you.  My method of emptying my NW account by going to the ATM everyday does mean that if we hit a period of low rates, then I am stuck with those rates.

With your method of leaving it with MoneyCorp, you have a chance to regain some control over your own money.

Thanks again. 

[suej]

[quote user="5-element"]

[quote user="AnOther"][quote user="sweet 17"]I have noticed that even though I have a £300 daily limit on my card, the most I have been able to withdraw recently is €340. [/quote]There is no reason for that from the NW side sweets and I've regularly been getting €350 from my local CA ATM which pays out in 50's which is to be expected with a rate above 1.2. Others I've noticed pay out in 20's, or sometimes a mixture, so could that be why ?

Try €330 next time and see if it only lets you take €320. Notionally, with yesterdays closing ECB rate of 1.2151, you might even scrape €360 [;-)]

[/quote]

 

I have experimented extensively with the maximum amount I can withdraw on a given day with my Nationwide debit card. I found that it depends entirely on the current exchange rate. There was a time when 320 euros was not even possible, then 330 was OK, then 340, and at the moment I can withdraw 350, even when the notes are all 20's....except for one which is, obviously, a tenner.

[/quote]

 

I gather that the amount you are able to withdraw is based on the exchange rate. The limit for withdrawal in cash per day is £300 - sterling- hence, depending on the exchange rate, the equivalent value in euros fluctuates.

I well remember the time when I regularly withdrew 400euros for my £300.... Ah woe!  Yesterday 360 euros ..any chance I could risk trying for 370 today??

 

[mint]

I understand about the exchange rate, Sue.  Hence my complaint:  it SHOULD be 350 or 360 euros and I fume at the 340.

Had an email from NW today, saying that, whilst NW's limit for me is £300, the amounts abroad are set by VISA and that a different ATM might well give me more than 340.

BTW, I am glad you are here, Sue, as I wanted to contact you but wasn't sure whether you are coming on here.

I will send you a PM in a mo![:)]

Oh, deffo NOT 370 today as the rate has dropped since yesterday afternoon![:(]

[suej]

 

 

  Yes Sweet , I'm around again.. We've been  away  3-4 weeks  seeing family in UK, shopping for the odd jar of Marmite and Pukka tea and moaning in the NW branch- not much joy with the latter ofcourse , just the usual charming polite policy waffle. Ah well , it was good while it lasted and we personally have certainly never had cause to complain about them before.

Buono camino to you soon!

Sue

[Jacqui Too]

Had an advice letter today to say about added travel insurance if you make the flex acc. your main account (not interested in that) but noted that even within the EU will will be charged to take cash out, £1 per transaction.

I don't think I mind that as long as I get a good exchange rate of the day.

 

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

But the 2% charge effectively makes the exchange rate worse anyway.

A week or so back I made two withdrawals of £200 each within a minute from Nationwide and First Direct. The total cost of the NW one was €166.41 and for First Direct it was €174.39, including their fee. So, nearly £8 more from First Direct. Once the new Nationwide charges kick in that will be reduced to a £3 difference. At that point I shall probably close my NW account because for general banking First Direct is easier and I don't particularly want to run multiple UK accounts.

Also, there's no logic to French ATMs. I have several locally that I use at different times.

La Poste will  generally give me the Euro equivalent of £300 to the nearest lower 10€ (currently getting €360).

Credit Agricole always sticks at €300.

Two different Societé General branches behave respectively like La Poste and CA. However, I recently discovered that the Soc Gen machine with a €300 limit will allow a second withdrawal immediately for a further €60. I haven't tried this trick with CA yet.

 

[Martin963]

Only happened on this thread recently.    Very bad news.

When I opened a Nationwide account about five years ago I was impressed by many aspects of their service.   I also opened an e savings account.

Sadly Nationwide have more recently been one of the organisations who have failed to keep me informed properly about endless cuts in their savings rates.   Compare Alliance & Leicester and Tesco who have both recently contacted me specifically to warn me that my bonus periods for rates were coming to an end and offering easy sensible good value alternatives.

If I had a blindfold on I'd have assumed these last two were the mutuals and that Nationwide was the money-grabbing greedy bunch of fleecers.

I concur particularly with everything that sweets has said re the folly of trying to be prudent.    Sadly I'm too long in the tooth to change my habits now,  even if they are out of kilter with the rest of the brave new world.    The financial morals that I was brought up on seem to have been turned on their head in the last five years.

So I'll be running down what's left in the Nationwide and they can go hang......

[AnOther]

Just got back from a couple of days in Toulouse during which the NW credit card has taken a hammering, including paying for fuel for the car, but pleased to find that it was accepted everywhere without question so as threatened earlier I will be using it a lot more from here on in.

 

[Kitty]

If they introduce these charges to withdraw money abroad, I have heard today that Nationwide are about to lose three more British customers who live in France.  Do you think that NW read threads like these?

[Gardengirl]

I had the standard reply from Nationwide today. I'll be closing my account when their charges come in; I've taken a Caxton FX card, which I'll use in ATMs like I've done with the flexaccount card.

The charges they propose to implement seem very high to me, and their travel insurance will probably be of no use, as we both have medical stuff which tends not to be covered by cards, although I don't know exactly what theirs will cover.

I doubt they read something like this, nor would they care about the numbers involved, I guess, even though large to medium amounts would seem to be involved.

We only have flexaccount and a couple of accounts which were used for savings, but have had little in them in the recent past. The flexaccount constantly has money sitting there for day to day needs in France, regular quite large amounts for charges for management of our apartment and for tax and energy bills etc, so pretty large amounts compared to what we leave in our main UK account.

I've been happy to take advantage of the very good account Nationwide offered, but it will be bye from me in November.

[mint]

Well, if our offer for a house here gets accepted, it'll goodbye to the bulk of our money in NW.

To be honest, these latest proposals have concentrated the mind.  It's no good people saying it's only 2%, there's also the £1 each time you take money out.

OH's card for some reason only allows him £200 whilst mine allows £300.  So, if he uses his card it's 2% plus £1 on £200!  That's nother 0.5%!

I must say that, although it's been good whilst it lasted, I am mighty miffed because I was NOT consulted and I have banked with them since 1983!

What point is it being a fully-paid up member if they introduce wide-ranging alterations and NOT consult you?

And, as I have pointed out earlier, the people who gain are those going into unauthorised overdraft and writing out cheques for which they jolly well know they do not have the funds to honour![:@]

[Kitty]

[quote user="gardengirl "] I've taken a Caxton FX card, which I'll use in ATMs like I've done with the flexaccount card. [/quote]

GG - Could you post more details about this card please?

[Doodle]

I was going to go down the route of Fair FX when it becomes available later this year for customers with an address outside of the UK then someone told me that as it's a pre paid money card if you mislay/lose the card you lose the money that's on it and can't reclaim it. Not that I'm in he habit of losing things but it worries me a tad just in case. If anyone can confirm that this is true I would be grateful as I haven't yet checked it out on their website.

Chris

[Juswundrin]

[quote user="knee gel"] if you mislay/lose the card you lose the money that's on it and can't reclaim it. [/quote]

If you notify them, they'll block the card to prevent aany further transactions. For any transactions in the interim:

"We will refund any incorrectly executed transaction immediately unless we have any reason to believe that the incident has been caused by a breach of this agreement, gross negligence or we have reasonable grounds to suspect fraudulent activity."

If using a debit card, the Fairffx card is loaded within about five minutes, so you only need to load as much as you need for, say a shopping trip or for a day's spending. And of course, the card's useless without the PIN for personal transactions.

We've had a Farifx card for some time, and are really happy with it.

[Doodle]

Thanks juswundrin, I have just spent an age going through the card T&Cs and found the info.

As it's monthly pension that would be loaded onto the card it seems that it's best to get in on and off the card as quickly as possible just in case! ie 'If you choose to hold a balance of more than £1000 on your MasterCard® Prepaid Card you understand and accept the risks of holding this large amount of money and specifically that you may lose your e-money if Newcastle Building Society becomes insolvent and that the Financial Services Compensation Scheme does not apply to your MasterCard® Prepaid Card'.

I think I should rename myself to 'JIC' just in case Chris!