The criticism comes just a month after Mortgage Introducer revealed the building society’s Rayleigh centre was experiencing service issues.
An intermediary, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “I sent a mortgage application to Nationwide’s Rayleigh Mortgage Centre on the 14 June 2006. I received an acknowledgement on the 15 June, requesting that I do not contact them for seven days. An SMS text message was later sent to my mobile, confirming the application had been credit scored and an account number issued.
“However, on 1 July, I received a fax from Rayleigh requesting that the applicant obtain a mortgage statement from his current lender and how he would pay the mortgage into retirement, despite retirement not being an issue due to the applicant’s age.
“I spoke to Nationwide Rayleigh and asked why it could not have contacted me sooner as it now looks as though a mortgage offer will not be produced until some six weeks after making the application. I was told that due to its competitive rates it was dealing with numerous applications and the lady dealing with my application had only just been passed the case.
“I was under the impression that Nationwide Building Society had made strenuous efforts to improve the service at its Rayleigh processing office but this is patently not the case.”
A spokesperson for Nationwide Building Society admitted the building society was working to rectify its processing problems. “We acknowledge that we do have some service issues in Rayleigh and are working hard to address them. We are very committed to the improvements we are making to our intermediary proposition and would very much like to contact the broker direct to discuss how we can offer better service in the future.”
