Nationwide Building Society going downhill fast.

Over Twenty years ago I was thumped hard with account charges by my then current bank Lloyds, for dropping below £100 credit balance, on the first occasion it had gone down to £99.99, the next time the charges from the first occasion knocked the balance below £100. My wife and I decided to move our account to the Nationwide building society, it was brilliant and I reccomended it to any one who would listen. We have used some Nationwide accounts for businesses but though not ideal things have been workable, the savings accounts paid a good rate of interest and overdraft interest rates again were reasonable.However over the last few years things have deteriorated, changes include not being able to withdraw less than £100 from the counter on a cash card, (if you want to do that you have to go to the post office or use a cash machine), mind bogglingly high overdraft interest rates, 0.5% interest on a cash ISA, no longer able to deposit cheques as cleared funds (an absolute godsend when times are hard). The latest crop of wheezes include a four day cheque clearance period instead of the current three, and funds must be in the account at least a day before they can be used to pay direct debits etc.The Nationwide building society is a mutual society owned by its members and has no shareholders other than its' members. I make this point to illustrate my total incomprehension at the way this society is run, I can see no benefit in these changes to the members who own this society, they do not receive excellent rates of interest on their savings or enjoy low interest rates on their overdrafts, levels and ranges of services are constantly being reduced.So where does our money go, obviously a good chunk goes to pay the salaries of the board of directors who run the society very badly in my opinion, the rest it appears to me seems to be squandered on sponsoring sports and a bunch of second rate Little Britain comedians to produce mediocre adverts to sell what is now a very third rate building society.No doubt you are wondering why I have not posted these comments on the Nationwides' website, believe me I have tried.

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