I need to rant

If you have the ‘app’, I thought you could change your address using that?

My daughter changed hers using the app when she moved.

Maybe give them a ring Monica, to check if you have to visit a branch, I'd be very surprised if you do.

I had this song and dance when we moved recently.
I changed address on the app and then went into a branch to check.
Both Yorkshire building society and Nationwide sent letters to my old address after I had notified them.
Nationwide apologised and compensated me.
YBS were impossible to get through to in that call centre staff were so thick so I gave up.

We had to open a joint account at and we had to go to the Nationwide branch with 2 identities each and fill in the details personally on their terminal.

I have a big beef with the Halifax site. I wanted to change my registered mobile and there was no way to do it. It told me to ring customer services, which I did. The agent said I had to download the app. Which I did. I changed the phone number on the app but its still showing the old mobile number on the online website which is the one I use most frequently.

Grrrr

The old mobile was a dumb one and I had to change it because it would no longer charge. So I put the sim into another dumb mobile but wanted to change it to my smartphone. Despite my doing to on the app any messages still come through on the old mobile.

We live in a small town in the Black Country with no high street banks for miles. My step son moved house last year so he had to make an appointment to go to Birmingham to sort out his mortgage. He had to take time off work which was very difficult, not to mention the cost of city centre parking. Online banking is ok for day to day things but anything else can be very inconvenient.

I sympathise M0nica, we are moving soon and imagine we will also be jumping through hoops.
Having apps and doing stuff online is a quicker and easier way to do things - until it isn’t, and then it is a big pain in the backside.

OldFrill

Maybe give them a ring Monica, to check if you have to visit a branch, I'd be very surprised if you do.

I did ring them and I was told by the call centre staff member that I would need to go into a branch.

I do not use apps, especially financial ones. I have dyspraxia, which means I have problem with fine motor movement (writing typing etc and manipulating small items) and numb fingers (so I cannot hold a stylus) and my typing is so random that I avoid all apps as they are physically too difficult to use and I am too prone to making too many mistakes. I am quite happy with online banking.

I understand your rage, I came very close to losing it when trying to gain access to a joint HSBC account when my husband had a brain bleed in February. I needed to be with him all day at the hospital as care was very poor due to short staffing. Although it was a joint account, my DH had used it as his own and all the household bills were paid from there. I had my own separate HSBC account which my pensions went into and I paid for all the food, cleaning, holidays, Christmas etc. HSBC knew me, but refused to renew my access to the joint account unless I went into a branch in person with passport, driving licence, and joint utility bills. Nearest bank was in the centre of the city, nowhere to park and expensive multistory car parks. They had me sobbing on the phone several times but refused to budge. Eventually I found a branch within reach of the hospital, but it still took two hours and calling the manageress to help before at last I could get in to pay the bills.

David49

We had to open a joint account at and we had to go to the Nationwide branch with 2 identities each and fill in the details personally on their terminal.

I have no objection in principle. There is a local branch of Nationwide, and this account will probably get moved there.

It is being told that I need to go to a branch when there is no branch within 15 miles - and this in the busy highly populated south of Britain.

I would imagine that those living in less poplous areas of the country could be faced with journeys of 50 miles or more, each way.

My frustration is on my husband’s account and with NS&I. We have separate savings accounts and he has been locked out of his for 2 years because he got his memorable words wrong. Their reaction was to send him a letter to which he had to reply and they would then send instructions about resetting his details. The first letter came and was replied to. He then must have forgotten about it or thrown the second letter away as junk. He has early Alzheimer’s and is wholly unconcerned. I do have his POA but am reluctant to use it. This is DH’s fault and no one else’s but the intractability of these institutions is maddening.
Like MOnica I dread apps. My vision is so poor I can’t handle them on my phone.

I had banked with the Halifax for many years but became increasingly frustrated with the service offered and the clunky online banking. I've recently switched all my accounts out.
Am very impressed with Nationwide - the process was fast and simple, so much easier to access.

The issue is not just money laundering but the actual identity of the individuals, the branch staff make sure that you and any others are who you say you are.

We still have several banks and Building Societies in town but they are a shadow of their former size.

You rant away - it is ageism and poverty division, given that not all of us can work or even afford a posh new phone for all these apps. Nor, in my case, a decent enough mobile signal to get them to work anyway (do NOT get me started on the ping pong between Tesco and O2)

We have moved to Nationwide because we have 3 branches within 10 miles and they are lovely. They are also trying to push us to apps, but we go in.

Call centres are not always as knowledgeable as they could be, and we have visiting surgeries in our local library that they did not mention for Barclays and Lloyds.

I was taking DGS to a football tournament in Wisbech (not my home town) and I had some change to bank for my guide unit. The queue was across the large branch twice, out the door and right down the street. Because I was not in a hurry, I joined - two hours to get inside the door where I could see the queue, and a staff member was offering to help people use the self serve - my reply was get on the counter and reduce the queue. And they closed the branch leaving people with a 15 mile car ride or a 22 mile bus ride!!

I’ve had a lot of bother with several banks - not ours but my dad’s, trying to sort out POA matters. Yes- having to travel to various towns away from home, waste half a day armed with all sorts of id and documents. Not to mention costs of parking, stress and odd coffee /snack costs necessary to get through. As others have mentioned the Nationwide has been the most helpful and straightforward to deal with.
Another issue to be aware of is that you must make appointments before visiting a bank out of your area , and don’t expect it to be anytime soon! The central phone lines were offering me appointments all over the place- some miles away and very inconvenient. All sorted now but very annoying and frustrating.

David49

The issue is not just money laundering but the actual identity of the individuals, the branch staff make sure that you and any others are who you say you are.

We still have several banks and Building Societies in town but they are a shadow of their former size.

It doesn't really matter why they do these checks, but that they make it possible for people to do them.

I would have thought in this high tech age, with AIaddingto it, where a surgeon was able to conduct an operation in another country while sat at his desk - and do it better than average, then banks should be able to devise a way to check on a person's identity, without expecting them to travel, at times, 100 miles to do so.

There are banks that let you change to online but they have restricted services. They are just deposit accounts not your everyday account, technology advances will help but criminal activity quickly catches up.

All I want to do is change my address on an account I already have and then use it online. It is a joint account with DH and we live at the same address. He has been using it online for a longtime and sorted it all out when there was a branch of the Halifax in our local town.

I know it will not help you personally, Monica, not in the short term anyway, but I think we should complain to our MPs when we ( or our loved ones) are affected by issues like this in the hope that it might lead to improvements for many more people in the future. But I do understand that when bogged down by such things, there is little or no energy left for such possibly futile actions.