Premium bonds: moving out of the 19th century & getting rid of cheques

Premium Bonds (NS&I) have said they are going to increase the frequency of prizes (ho-ho!) by reducing the monthly £1m prize count and creating £25 prizes. Fair enough. If that is the case, there may be more cheques in the post to pay prizes.

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Why do NS&I still insist on sending cheques for Premium Bond prize winnings. Why can't they offer payment through BACS to a mandated bank account. It seems inefficient, insecure costly and unenvironmental in the 21st century to be sending cheques. NS&I have been talking about mandating prize cheuqes since 2001, but haven't got round to it.

Whenever asked, it's reasons like: "we'd have to change our T&Cs" (well, JFDI!) "it would cost more and we'd have to reduce our prize fund" "our customers prefer cheques" (well, I've never been asked in 40 years)

They do have to notify winners of winnings, but this could be done by e-mil (they already offer a web checking service for prizes) or by an annual statement (rather than when prizes are won).

About time NS&I got into the 21st century, IMHO.

Reply to
Allan
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Quite..

Cost more?? HTF does it cost more to do a BACS transfer and send an email than to print out and send cheques?

People who are over 90, perhaps. Why would *anyone* want a bit of paper they have to take/send to their bank to pay in, rather than just having it paid in automatically?

Agreed.

Reply to
Andy Pandy

Loss of interest on money leaving their account several days sooner...?

Premature write-off of cheque-printing and envelope-stuffing machines...?

Cost of correcting stuff every time they mis-key someone's account details...?

Cost of mailing winners to request account details... or mailing everyone, most of whom will never be winners, and others of whom will change bank and not tell NS+I...?

IT costs...?

Not that any of this is much of an excuse, of course... :-(

Reply to
Martin

Trivial compared to postage costs.

Eh? They don't need them any more so there's a greater cost from not using them than from using them?? They could sell them, even if for scrap, and free up the space/resources/electric etc.

How would that be different from cheque details?

Virtually all payroll works using BACS instead of cheques. Because it's

*cheaper*.
Reply to
Andy Pandy

But I thought NS+I and Royal Mail are subsids of the same parent company (aka GBrown plc). So postage is free. (Go on - tell me there's an identifiable incremental cost of sorting a few extra letters each month... )

Ah - but the accountants will make them take the w/o hit in one lump. That'll hurt their short-term bonus calculations.

A slight typo in a "naem" doesn't matter as much as swapping a couple of digits in an a/c number.

Yes - cos few employers haven't invested in chq issuing machines with the capacity to run monthly payroll. And very few payslips need to be posted.

Don't forget, you did ask "HTF..." and so I've offered you some possible scenarios... :-)

Reply to
Martin

The 63p or so bank charge for writing a cheque on a company account is a much more significant factor than the cost of putting a cheque along with the payslip vs doing a BACS run.

Reply to
Jonathan Bryce

Of course. but I bet NS+I don't pay that... :-)

Reply to
Martin

Maybe they do it to be sure their database of addresses is kept up to date. If the money went by BACS then people might not bother to notify them of changes.

Why should they be concerend that their database is correct if the address is not actually needed? Perhaps they share it with people to whom it matters.

Robert

Reply to
RobertL

Probably because they don't know the bank account details of the winners. Contacting each individual winner to find out those details would be more difficult that just mailing them a cheque.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Blunt

I like to hear the rattle of the letter box and the sound of five Premium Bond cheques landing on the mat. Derek.

Reply to
DerekF

From where did that come - I have not seen it stated anywhere?

From where did that come - I have not seen it stated anywhere?

From where did that come - I have not seen it stated anywhere?

Reply to
Judith Smith
[snip]

Something along the lines that NS&I have to notify prize winners by post which is in their T&Cs

The suggestion that using BACS would cost them more than sending a cheque, which would reduce the money available for prizes.

The fact that I've never (IIRC) received/done any survey or questionnaire re Premium bonds (despite holding them for 40+ years)

HTH

PS: the repeated copy/pasted question seemed a bit defensive/monotonous?

Reply to
Allan

Thanks - so they hadn't in fact stated any of the three points which you made

Reply to
Judith Smith

I received written replies from them, but since I don't have those letters any more, I can't authoritatively quote chapter and verse which is why I was being tentative. If you're suggesting I don't have definitive proof of those replies, you would be correct. If you felt I should get it (again), I'm sure I could do so.

Reply to
Allan

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