Taken from here.
The Nationwide Building Society chief executive has come under fire for changing his email address following protests about alterations to the society’s FlexAccount.
Until recently, all members could contact Graham Beale, chief executive of the society, directly through his email address graham.beale@nationwide.co.uk
But anyone now trying to contact him using that address receives an immediate email from Nationwide’s online security system saying: “It has not been possible to deliver your message to graham.beale@nationwide.co.uk as this account has been closed. If your inquiry is customer service related, please re-send your message to customer.services@nationwide.co.uk.
Alternatively if you want to contact our chief executive, please re-send your email to CEO@nationwide.co.uk.”
Although the second address intimates that emails sent to the CEO will get Beale’s attention, Marcus Williamson, an IT consultant and Nationwide customer of 20 years standing, points out that this, too, is an email box with no guarantee that the chief executive will read the contents.
Emails to this address get the following response: “Thank you for contacting Nationwide. We confirm receipt of your email, and will ensure you receive a response shortly. Please note, this email box is only serviced during normal working hours – 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday excluding bank holidays. This is an automated response, please do not respond to this message.”
Williamson says: “This is not a true way of reaching Graham Beale, but an attempt to kid people into believing that they are dealing with the CEO, when they are not.
“He used to be very responsive but in the last four weeks it seems like he has closed down that address and stopped responding to me.”
Williamson runs a site CEO Email addresses at – http://www.ceoemail.com/ – to help customers contact CEOs directly rather than dealing with customer service departments. He says he has never come across one changing their email address in this way before.
“When I spoke to Nationwide, they claim they have had to close the address because of the large amounts of spam received. This cannot be true.
“I believe that Nationwide has closed Graham Beale’s email because of the large number of customers who have emailed him recently protesting about proposed changes to the Nationwide FlexAccount. This used to be the best account for use abroad but Nationwide intends to take away these benefits.”
Nationwide announced a few weeks ago that from November it will raise the charges for spending and cash withdrawals using the FlexAccount card to 2% both in Europe and the rest of the world. Previously only those using their card outside Europe were charged for the service, and even then only 1% of the transaction cost.
Williamson observed: “The Nationwide used to be very good, very responsive, but it’s now more like a bank. It used to be proud to say that it was different, But it’s not that different anymore.”