We had a 5-figure sum to invest. Their 5 year bond was recommended by Moneysupermarket.com. We followed that link and entered all details carefully - names, address, passport numbers, current account details, etc.
We got an error message at the end, but no explanation what it was. We were unable to retrieve our details to fix whatever the error was, so we sent an e-mail to their onlinesaver e-mail address and got no response. We tried that again. Still no response, so we sent an e-mail to their marketing department. Still no response.
This was over four days which, to be fair, included a weekend. Eventually my partner she lost patience and phoned them on their London number. Their representative was very casual and unapologetic. We had lost all confidence and my partner just asked for an e-mail to confirm that they would not take our application further.
This would have been our third biggest ever financial move, after buying the house, and buying a pension, but we genuinely were worried that we had fallen for a very clever, convincing scam.
We will leave our money in Nationwide and ING for now.
Please note that we are accustomed to online banking with Nationwide, ING, MBNA, Barclaycard, Santander & HSBC, and I even worked 10 years in IT as a programmer with a major bank. I have had bad service from many banks (including the one I worked for!), but never as bad as this, and involving so much money. Luckily, all we lost was the cost of a long phone call to London.
We eventually chose a 5-year bond with Nationwide at a slightly lower interest rate, but also much less hassle and stress; it took about a minute via their internet banking!