Cashing in bonds

They don't have the information to do this. Majority of bonds over the years have been done manually or through Post Offices.

But why not make it an option, say, that you had to check and update it once a year or they start sending cheques again ? It must save money and postage which could be ploughed into prizes.

Mrcheerful

Isn't it just a cost-vs-benefit thing? You'd have to employ zillions of folk to key in banking details for all bond holders, just to simplify the payment process for the miniscule number who ever win something. (I assume they just send out cheques for all but the big prizes.) By contrast, cashing-in prem bonds starts with info coming into Lytham, and it makes more sense to capture bank info for those few folk.

OK then why not make it an option for higher value bond holders, I have been getting at least a cheque a month for most of this year, it would make sense to directly send it via bacs.

In message , mrcheerful . writes

I dont see how your suggestion will save postage or overall cost, in fact it would increase costs.

Every winner would need to be advised by post of their win anyway, so the postage cost for winners would be the same.

If the details needed to be confirmed every year then every bond holder who opted in to your option, not just the winners, would need to be contacted even if they weren't winners.

There are loads of holders who only have a handful of bonds, but they are still likely to want to opt onto your scheme, so they would still need to be contacted even though they were never winners and highly unlikely to be one.

Despite the 'holders number' arrangement many bond holders have numerous 'holders numbers' meaning that the work would be duplicated.

The public have an propensity to fill forms in wrongly which means a significant proportion of win payments would be sent to invalid or wrong accounts causing more correspondence.

In message , mrcheerful . writes

Thats fair comment. At what level would you set the threshold for 'higher value'?

Bearing in mind the cost involved of still having to advise the winner by post, plus the cost of those payments which are sent to incorrect accounts or closed accounts etc. and then compare that with the marketing advantage of offering the option of more bonds in lieu of a cheque, I dont think the cost of paying winnings by BACS is cost effective yet.

Perhaps it should could be offered for new purchases only for those who are not already holders.

I would be happy to get an email and a bacs payment.

I would put bacs as an option for those with 10k plus of bonds as they get a good number of cheques over a year.

Mrcheerful

Perhaps if there were an option that small wins not be paid out at all, but used instead to buy more bonds? It wouldn't work for folks who already hold the maximum £30k allowed, but there must be many who hold less. The winners would still be notified by post, but would be saved the "hassle" of cashing/depositing their cheque.

Alternatively, an arrangement could be made with a nominated trader, so that a £50 win would be delivered as a parcel containing a couple of bottles of M&C, and if the bond holder had forgotten to notify a change of address, the van driver keeps the booze.

I wouldn't. Email, these days, is not a reliable means of notifying anything, given the likelyhood that they are too easily deleted unread by mistake in the 1 sec or less you allow when separating spam from genuine messages.

There is already!

That is what happens now.

Now that sounds like a good idea!

snip

There already is the option to re-invest winings in new bonds if under the limit.

Mark BR

Well, then, what the hell are the anti-cheque brigade complaining about? If they can't be bothered traipsing to the bank (or posting it to their bank), they can surely just elect to be paid in extra bonds, and then cash in the bonds. Since cashing in the bonds has the option of taking the payment by direct transfer, the cheque problem is thus neatly side-stepped.

OK, next you'll tell me that cashing in the bonds still involves posting a form, so they might as well have posted the winnings cheque to the bank.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

But they don't let you do that if you already hold the maximum, which is exactly the sort of person who gets regular cheques in the post!

There are two possible solutions to this.

Either one could hold the maximum minus an allowance to cater for small prizes,

Or they could fix it so that when the holding exceeds the maximum as a result of prizes, then these new prizes are barred from themselves winning. This would be an incentive to the holder to cash them in pronto.