Did you not come to that conclusion in May 2023? Many others did and adjusted their Jan-Mar account behaviour accordingly and crossed their fingers.
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Open one now with the £200 CASS offer and leave it for next year.
To be eligible, you must have one of the following product combinations:
- A qualifying current account and qualifying savings
- A qualifying current account and a qualifying mortgage.
Yup, seems that way.
Given that you only need to have Flexplus i.e. don’t need to use it as an account, this effectively means you’re only paying £56 net for the insurance which seems like a fantastic bargain.
Even better, I have a joint flex plus account and both of us are getting £100.
I keep £100 in a savings account, then send £13 a month for the flexplus. That’s all.
And I qualified
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Very similar here though I’ve the 8% saver.
FlexPlus insurance (at least for mobiles) isn’t worth the paper it’s written on unfortunately. The partner basically told me I’d send my phone away for 2 weeks and have to eat shit in the meantime. They also don’t use Apple authorised repair centres.
So I cancelled it. The travel insurance isn’t useful to me personally (I live in China as I think you guys probably know now), but I cede it may be useful if you’re likely to leave from Britain on your flights.
Yes, not so good if you have an iPhone.
You can get an extension on the travel insurance though I’m not sure they’d run to a year.
Shouldn’t you have advised them that you’re not a UK resident and they’d have removed all the insurance elements anyway or opted to convert/close the account.
You cannot have part of a FlexPlus account. Furthermore, I downgraded after the insurance company basically told me to eat shit.
Like I can go two weeks without my phone… which is also my wallet, my travel card, my means of contact with all of my friends and my WeChat login to do that.
As such, I didn’t need to tell them anything. I just left my address as is, they’ll send my post to my parents’ address.
If I decide to not come back to Britain I’ll probably go home to close the accounts I don’t have an interest in keeping anymore. Until then, I’m not working here and I have an address I can use. I don’t pay tax here and my ties are in Britain, I’m possibly a tax resident even though not an actual resident for a year.
You mean your insurance provider offered a solution in accordance with the T&Cs which you agreed to?
Not to be rude, but telling me in the T&C that there’s stores available led me to believe that I would be able to use them.
Telling me there are stores but when I go to claim telling me “actually it’s mandatory to mail in if you don’t live in catchment, even if you’re willing to travel to the store” isn’t really following the spirit of their own T&C IMO.
Especially since I can’t know the catchment area beforehand 
hope that helps!
Also, I think it’s generally poor business practice for a reputable company like Nationwide to go with a partner who isn’t authorised by the manufacturer, but I accept that I made the assumption without reading the fine print on that one.
Additional services
We may be able to offer our additional repair and replacement services.
Eligibility for these services will be determined by your chosen delivery address,
availability of the make and model of your device and the time of day that your
claim is accepted. If we are able to provide this service it will carry an additional
charge of £50 on top of your standard excess. The additional repair and
replacement services are optional services which you are not required to take.
Seems pretty clear to me that they are not committing to anything of the sort.
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Snake oil insurance. At least you know to avoid in future, so lesson learned.
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It isn’t. It’s perfectly useful, and potentially very good value, it just doesn’t guarantee manufacturer parts, and it doesn’t guarantee you won’t be without a phone in the event of a repair.
If those are features one requires, then it’s advisable to pick a policy with those features. I don’t, and Assurant have replaced/repaired my ~£2k retail phone twice, both times surpassing my expectations (delivering what appeared to be a direct-from-manufacturer refurbished device each time, in one case upgrading in the process).
Snake oil insurance makes it sound like PPI or something.
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Delivery address doesn’t exist when you intend to go to a shop but I get it, you know everything! Realistically I think it probably is technically my fault, it doesn’t change that it’s scummy business practice and enough people use iPhone in Britain that Nationwide (being a mutual) should be seeking better value.
I also think it’s somewhat funny that I lived in walking distance of the HQ but had objectively worse service for the same price than someone living within the M25.
Snake oil insurance, in the future I will get AppleCare+. Likely to buy my next iPhone in Hong Kong or Japan anyways.
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No, but I do make sure I understand and attempt to think through and if necessary mitigate policy exclusions before purchasing.
For example - I acknowledged the lack of any hire phone and possibility I would have to send my phone away for a period, and decided that in that event I would switch to an old phone, then switch back when the repaired/replaced unit arrived. When I eventually claimed I then knew I would have to do exactly that. And it was fine.
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To be honest and I hope it’s not controversial, but a policy with no loaner phone and no stores accessible, where they tell you there are stores accessible (although the spectre of maybe you can’t is indeed present) shouldn’t be allowed.
We don’t live in an age where you can survive without a phone. Immediately the insurance isn’t fit for purpose.
Nationwide at the very least should tell you to begin with that stores will or will not be available before you have the account change approved so you can make an informed decision. Not dangle a store over your head… then tell you there’s an arbitrary limit that wasn’t detailed anywhere.
In reality; I couldn’t use stores at all. I should have been presented that fact, they had my postcode!
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You can decline the insurance element. As the account itself is for UK residents only, they’d likely downgrade you to FlexAccount or more likely give you notice of closure if they don’t serve non-UK residents generally.
As for the insurance bundle, the providers will be selected for cost and if it’s not explicitly in the T&Cs then you can’t expect it.
As a Android user, I only got a basic loan phone from CPW repairs when I purchased the phone via their group of companies. Other channels not.