'Nationwide keeps sending our bank details to the empty house down the street'

Repeated errors by Nationwide drove Allan and Janet Lambert away from the building society - COPYRIGHT JAY WILLIAMS

My wife and I have had accounts with Nationwide Building Society for five years and the service at our branch has been exemplary.

This contrasts with the centralised section, which sets up new accounts. It fails to take elementary precautions to ensure that mailing addresses are correctly assigned to postcodes, which Nationwide relies on for security purposes.

Last year my wife opened two new accounts in the branch with the correct address and postcode. These were then set up centrally by operators who do not check the postcode against the application form address. In our case, the accounts were assigned to the address of an empty house nearby.

Attempts to correct this resulted in other previously correctly addressed accounts becoming incorrectly addressed, with letters, statements and cards being sent to the empty house.

Allan Lambert, North Wales

Your wife was so fed up that she moved her accounts elsewhere. You stayed with Nationwide but say that on re-opening a Regular Saver account with no change of account number or sort code, the incorrect address of the empty house that had appeared on your wife’s Nationwide savings was used too.

By then you had left a note for the postman fixed to the front door of the empty house, which was now for sale, explaining what was happening.

As a result of all this you are now moving most of your Nationwide accounts to a different provider.

Nationwide accepts that, although you provided your correct address on your application, an incorrect one was recorded on its system.

You point out that, rather than having a human being comparing paperwork, the system selects the address from a list of postcode options and here picked the wrong one.

Your efforts to put a stop to this failed but mine succeeded. Nationwide has paid several hundred pounds compensation between the two of you in respect of this issue.

• Jessica Gorst-Williams tackles consumer problems for Telegraph readers every week. To contact her, click here. If you want to ask a general money question, email moneyexpert@telegraph.co.uk. The best of the answers are included in our weekly newsletter