{"id":7010,"date":"2012-03-07T06:29:55","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T06:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=7010"},"modified":"2012-03-08T09:36:48","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T09:36:48","slug":"making-headway-despite-the-attempts-of-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=7010","title":{"rendered":"Not servicing the customer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just had an epic phone battle with Nationwide.\u00a0I have been trying to make a \u00a3400 payment online, via my Flexaccount Visa card.<\/p>\n

My card was declined.<\/p>\n

The account balance is healthy, so I tried again.<\/p>\n

The card was declined again.<\/p>\n

I tried for a ‘third time lucky’ approach, taking extra care to ensure that every single keyboard depression was the correct one, except it was third time unlucky, as my card card was declined again.<\/p>\n

I called Nationwide and had the most surreal Marx Brothers-esque, round-the-houses conversation with an offshore customer services operative.<\/p>\n

Apparently Nationwide had put a total block on my card. Nice of them to tell me in advance, wasn’t it? They have my number.<\/p>\n

Would it be too much to ask, do you think, for someone at Nationwide to think (!); ‘We’re going to block this guy’s card. Let’s, you know, give him a ring and give him this piece of news. Just so he isn’t embarrassed, the next time he tries to use it’.<\/p>\n

Well obviously it is too much to ask.<\/p>\n

The customer service operator at Nationwide said that they had blocked my card because they believe it had become compromised.<\/p>\n

As my card has been hyperactive this week – international travel, overseas accommodation and foreign currency transactions all taking place amongst a slew of other payments – I asked what I felt was a reasonable question.<\/p>\n

‘What transactions have occurred that leads Nationwide to believe my card has become compromised?’<\/p>\n

‘The card department will not tell you that’.<\/p>\n

What the actual fuck?<\/p>\n

I asked what the next step was and heard words I was dreading:<\/p>\n

‘I will get a new card issued which will take three-to-five working days to arrive’.<\/p>\n

So my fully-working card will arrive, at my home address, to replace the blocked card, whilst the blocked card and I are in Texas.<\/p>\n

I explained that I am flying out to the US in a couple of days and asked if there was *anything* that Nationwide could do, to allow me to have access to my account and cash, while I’m abroad.<\/p>\n

For example, Amex will overnight express a replacement card to a customer.<\/p>\n

Short answer: No, Nationwide will make a card and pop it in the post.<\/p>\n

Which leaves me 7,000 miles away from my working card.<\/p>\n

Awesome.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The customer services operative was (I guess) working from a script.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She\/it was rigidly inflexible with regard to actually helping me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Guess what Nationwide’s strapline is, according to their website?<\/p>\n

…. we’re here to help!<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

Yeah, right.<\/p>\n

Here to help<\/strong><\/em>, except if you need reasonable information about precisely why your card is being blocked.<\/p>\n

Here to help<\/strong><\/em>, except if you need reasonable access to your cash whilst overseas.<\/p>\n

Fucktards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just had an epic phone battle with Nationwide.\u00a0I have been trying to make a \u00a3400 payment online, via my Flexaccount Visa card. My card<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}