Premium Bonds

"Mark Opolo" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Every time I've won, the cheque's been the first I've heard.

But I've never won anything more than £50-100...

If it's the million pounds you get a knock on the door on the 1st (apparently)

If it's 50 quid, about the 20th

tim

"Mark Opolo" wrote

Never - Premium Bond winners aren't sent cheques...

Pedantic :-)

True, but I wish they bloody wouldn't. I wish they wouldn't send cheques or warrants (or whatever they call them). I wish they'd get into the 20th (or even 21st) century and start paying any prizes via BACS (and stop rolling out the same out tired reasons as to why they can't use BACS each time they are nagged about it).

If you're that hassled, why not get the prizes rolled back into more premium bonds (unless you've the full holding)? The small amounts one usually gets won't usually be missed from the pocket, and anything big will be paid - still by warrant, but rather infrequently :-)

But I do agree with the sentiment.

In message , Allan wrote

When the Government asks us about spending cuts perhaps suggest culling the staff who still use quill pens to fill out the warrants :)

If they paid winnings by BACS they'd have to write to each winner individually to confirm their bank account details. The winner would then have to supply them with that information and wait until they had input that into their systems and transferred the money. The administrative cost of doing that might eat up much of the value of the winnings paid out. I would have thought just sending a cheque would be much simpler.

Chris

A Google on the NS&I site establishes the following

The large number of prizes we issue each month means that the £1 million jackpot is delivered on the first working day of the month and the other prizes will automatically be delivered during the rest of the month.

Rob Graham

In message , Chris Blunt wrote

Or the next time they send out a warrant invite the winner to log into their account at

and offer the option for the account holder to supply bank details that can be used for future payments - and only be notified by email about the 'win'. They will have to change soon as the banks will stop accepting warrants from customers, or perhaps introduce a £5 charge for processing them.

The problem is that for most people a Premium Bond win only happens very rarely. Even if they held bank details, how would NS&I know that account was still valid at the time of a win? People probably change banks account far more often than they have Premium Bond wins.

BACS may be a good system for making regular payments to people, but I can see why trying to use it to make occasional payments once every few years, or even decades, would be an administrative nightmare.

"Chris Blunt" wrote

But they probably change address

**even more** often than changing bank account...

"Chris Blunt" wrote

... and posting warrants to the "last known address" would be even worse!!