NS&I Cannot Process 2 Letters In One Envelope

molerat

Don't send two letters to NS&I in one envelope as their automated opening and scanning system cannot process them and will only deal with the first one it removes from the envelope even if they are folded separately !

At the end of August MrsM & I wanted to combine our premium bond accounts with our other NS&I investments so they all came under one log in. Called the help desk and they said it can only be done in writing, either by letter or their form as the system will not do it automatically unless requested. Wrote 2 letters and decided to pop them into one envelope as that worked OK when we posted the forms at the end of our 5 year bonds earlier this year.

MrsM received a letter after a couple of weeks and the p bonds appeared in her on line account, nothing for me though. Phoned up today and the above glitch was explained to me. It seems it can handle forms for different accounts but not letters.

:mad:

daytona0

I learnt this lesson a long time ago, but it wasn't even linked to an automated system!

If you have two queries then separate them! I contacted my bank inquiring about PPI and an account issue, both on the same letter. A few days later I got a letter from the PPI department and, upon chasing the other query up, I was advised that they "did not receive my letter" - umm, yes you did!!

So now, one query for one envelope. That applies for EVERY company, not just NS&I.

NBLondon

I'm intrigued - do they have a robot that opens the envelopes and puts them in a scanner - or minimum wage clerks? Presumably the scanning software recognises the first topic it sees and forwards the whole lot to the best guess at an appropriate department where the second topic may or may not be noticed and passed on.


If I put two letters in two small envelopes addressed to different departments; then put both of those in a large envelope to save postage - would that confuse them too?

Pennywise

daytona0 wrote: »

So now, one query for one envelope. That applies for EVERY company, not just NS&I.

Yep, HMRC are the same. We've learned the hard way to use separate envelopes. Havn't tried multiple documents lately now that they scan all incomings, but certainly up to a couple of years ago when it was hand opened and hand-sorted, it was almost a dead cert that only the top piece of paper was dealt with. It was once explained to me that all the paperwork goes with the top document, but what they could never explain was why nothing was done with the other paperwork once the clerk dealt with the top document - it seems they were happy just to throw it away rather than put it back in the system for processing.