A tussle with Nationwide's so-called technical dept

A tussle with Nationwide's so-called technical dept

The joy of online banking is that you don't have to age gently in a queue whenever you need to shift money about. In principle, anyway. In fact, trying to negotiate your way through cyberspace can take more of a toll on health, wealth and sanity than a trip down to your local branch, as Lucy O'Meara found when she tried to transfer funds online from her Nationwide account.

Her access was blocked when she answered a security question wrongly and so she called Nationwide's internet security centre, assuming that a quick identity check would readmit her. Instead she was told that the only solution was for her to re-register for internet services. She did so. Her new banking details arrived in the post a few days later but when she input them a message warned that access was barred for security reasons.

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So it was back to the security team, who advised her to re-register a second time. Same result. Re-register a third time, the technical wizards told her. Same result. A 38-minute phone call to the "technical department" brought no result. "I find it laughable that Nationwide should call it a technical department as in my experience the only technical advice it provides is that one should re-register," says O'Meara, who had by now been without banking facilities for two months.

"I began to realise that I could re-register for the rest of my life without a solution."

Two days after the press office is alerted, miracles happen. Nationwide discovers that it had failed to realise that incorrect security information had prompted the saga and therefore failed to reset security questions when O'Meara re-registered.

She has now received £100 in compensation, a bouquet of flowers and an apology for the length of time it took one of Britain's biggest lenders to solve what was actually a very simple problem.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008