Natwest digital regular saver - what to do after saving £1000

OceanSound

Bridlington1 said:

You can do about 100 debit card payments per day on a Natwest/RBS debit card. If you have double round ups and all transactions are amounts ending in £0.01, you can round up a maximum of £198 per day into each regular saver. Assuming you had £1k in it now, put another £150 in today and another £150 on 1st January, you could fill both Natwest and RBS in 19 days, so by 15th January. That's assuming you had a lot of time (and patience) on your hands and had nothing better to do.

Does anyone know if this 100 debit card payments  or thereabouts is something 'set in stone' or not? I searched online for 'natwest roundups account maximum roundups per day' but nothing relevant comes up. 

I checked my notes, and to reach £1000, I've done 67 round-ups on one day and similar amounts on other days but never around 100. I've a feeling the 100th transaction or 101st transaction will be declined, but I wonder why this is not made clear anywhere and left for us to experience/discover.

kaMelo

Probably because they didn't envisage someone going to all that effort to use (abuse) the round up feature just to add a few quid, they didn't feel the need to lay out a limit.

Bridlington1

OceanSound said:

Bridlington1 said:

You can do about 100 debit card payments per day on a Natwest/RBS debit card. If you have double round ups and all transactions are amounts ending in £0.01, you can round up a maximum of £198 per day into each regular saver. Assuming you had £1k in it now, put another £150 in today and another £150 on 1st January, you could fill both Natwest and RBS in 19 days, so by 15th January. That's assuming you had a lot of time (and patience) on your hands and had nothing better to do.

Does anyone know if this 100 debit card payments  or thereabouts is something 'set in stone' or not? I searched online for 'natwest roundups account maximum roundups per day' but nothing relevant comes up. 

I checked my notes, and to reach £1000, I've done 67 round-ups on one day and similar amounts on other days but never around 100. I've a feeling the 100th transaction or 101st transaction will be declined, but I wonder why this is not made clear anywhere and left for us to experience/discover.

I tried doing 100 debit card payments in a single day in the spring. After my card started getting declined, I used RBS's chat service and they told me there was a limit of 100 debit card payments per day and to try making the payment the next day.

kaMelo said:

Probably because they didn't envisage someone going to all that effort to use (abuse) the round up feature just to add a few quid, they didn't feel the need to lay out a limit.

I suspect the cost of paying out extra interest will be more or less offset by the transaction fees they are getting from the transactions so don't think they really care. Moreover they will have realised that once you have gone to the effort of filling the regular savers up, you will be less likely to withdraw the money again.

OceanSound

kaMelo said:

Probably because they didn't envisage someone going to all that effort to use (abuse) the round up feature just to add a few quid, they didn't feel the need to lay out a limit.

If they didn't envisage then how does their system prevent the 100th or thereabout transaction. 

Did a computer decide that (as opposed to a human)? 
Did a human not need to program that ? Or is it done behind the scenes with some smart AI? Doubt it. 

I think it was an oversight by NatWest not to mention it. 

kaMelo

OceanSound said:

kaMelo said:

Probably because they didn't envisage someone going to all that effort to use (abuse) the round up feature just to add a few quid, they didn't feel the need to lay out a limit.

If they didn't envisage then how does their system prevent the 100th or thereabout transaction. 

Did a computer decide that (as opposed to a human)? 
Did a human not need to program that ? Or is it done behind the scenes with some smart AI? Doubt it. 

I think it was an oversight by NatWest not to mention it. 

It could have been by accident, whoever programmed the database only allowed two digits in the column. Not necessarily to set a limit as such but not an unreasonable assumption that no one would need to make so many transactions a day.

OceanSound

Bridlington1 said:

OceanSound said:

Bridlington1 said:

You can do about 100 debit card payments per day on a Natwest/RBS debit card. If you have double round ups and all transactions are amounts ending in £0.01, you can round up a maximum of £198 per day into each regular saver. Assuming you had £1k in it now, put another £150 in today and another £150 on 1st January, you could fill both Natwest and RBS in 19 days, so by 15th January. That's assuming you had a lot of time (and patience) on your hands and had nothing better to do.

Does anyone know if this 100 debit card payments  or thereabouts is something 'set in stone' or not? I searched online for 'natwest roundups account maximum roundups per day' but nothing relevant comes up. 

I checked my notes, and to reach £1000, I've done 67 round-ups on one day and similar amounts on other days but never around 100. I've a feeling the 100th transaction or 101st transaction will be declined, but I wonder why this is not made clear anywhere and left for us to experience/discover.

I tried doing 100 debit card payments in a single day in the spring. After my card started getting declined, I used RBS's chat service and they told me there was a limit of 100 debit card payments per day and to try making the payment the next day.

kaMelo said:

Probably because they didn't envisage someone going to all that effort to use (abuse) the round up feature just to add a few quid, they didn't feel the need to lay out a limit.

I suspect the cost of paying out extra interest will be more or less offset by the transaction fees they are getting from the transactions so don't think they really care. Moreover they will have realised that once you have gone to the effort of filling the regular savers up, you will be less likely to withdraw the money again.

If staff said limit of 100, that means the 101st transaction fails.

kaMelo said:

OceanSound said:

kaMelo said:

Probably because they didn't envisage someone going to all that effort to use (abuse) the round up feature just to add a few quid, they didn't feel the need to lay out a limit.

If they didn't envisage then how does their system prevent the 100th or thereabout transaction. 

Did a computer decide that (as opposed to a human)? 
Did a human not need to program that ? Or is it done behind the scenes with some smart AI? Doubt it. 

I think it was an oversight by NatWest not to mention it. 

It could have been by accident, whoever programmed the database only allowed two digits in the column. Not necessarily to set a limit as such but not an unreasonable assumption that no one would need to make so many transactions a day.

Allowing two digits means 99 is the highest number. Reaching 100 would trigger the error condition meaning 100th transaction fails. 

 A member has mentioned above that his experience  was that the 101st transaction fails. RBS staff confirmed this according to his post.

Also, whoever who programmed it couldn't have done it both by accident AND by making 'not an unreasonable assumption'. It's one or the other.

Bridlington1

OceanSound said:

Bridlington1 said:

OceanSound said:

Bridlington1 said:

You can do about 100 debit card payments per day on a Natwest/RBS debit card. If you have double round ups and all transactions are amounts ending in £0.01, you can round up a maximum of £198 per day into each regular saver. Assuming you had £1k in it now, put another £150 in today and another £150 on 1st January, you could fill both Natwest and RBS in 19 days, so by 15th January. That's assuming you had a lot of time (and patience) on your hands and had nothing better to do.

Does anyone know if this 100 debit card payments  or thereabouts is something 'set in stone' or not? I searched online for 'natwest roundups account maximum roundups per day' but nothing relevant comes up. 

I checked my notes, and to reach £1000, I've done 67 round-ups on one day and similar amounts on other days but never around 100. I've a feeling the 100th transaction or 101st transaction will be declined, but I wonder why this is not made clear anywhere and left for us to experience/discover.

I tried doing 100 debit card payments in a single day in the spring. After my card started getting declined, I used RBS's chat service and they told me there was a limit of 100 debit card payments per day and to try making the payment the next day.

kaMelo said:

Probably because they didn't envisage someone going to all that effort to use (abuse) the round up feature just to add a few quid, they didn't feel the need to lay out a limit.

I suspect the cost of paying out extra interest will be more or less offset by the transaction fees they are getting from the transactions so don't think they really care. Moreover they will have realised that once you have gone to the effort of filling the regular savers up, you will be less likely to withdraw the money again.

If staff said limit of 100, that means the 101st transaction fails.

kaMelo said:

OceanSound said:

kaMelo said:

Probably because they didn't envisage someone going to all that effort to use (abuse) the round up feature just to add a few quid, they didn't feel the need to lay out a limit.

If they didn't envisage then how does their system prevent the 100th or thereabout transaction. 

Did a computer decide that (as opposed to a human)? 
Did a human not need to program that ? Or is it done behind the scenes with some smart AI? Doubt it. 

I think it was an oversight by NatWest not to mention it. 

It could have been by accident, whoever programmed the database only allowed two digits in the column. Not necessarily to set a limit as such but not an unreasonable assumption that no one would need to make so many transactions a day.

Allowing two digits means 99 is the highest number. Reaching 100 would trigger the error condition meaning 100th transaction fails. 

 A member has mentioned above that his experience  was that the 101st transaction fails. RBS staff confirmed this according to his post.

Also, whoever who programmed it couldn't have done it both by accident AND by making 'not an unreasonable assumption'. It's one or the other.

It might be 99, I know 100 was a critical number. One begins to lose track after the first few dozen or so transactions. I suppose you could try doing 100 as an experiment if you wanted to get a definitive answer as to what the cut off is.

flaneurs_lobster

As a database designer I would just like to say that no-one would should have a data element for "number of debit card transactions today". That value would should always be derived dynamically, so any limit is set outwith the data.

Patrington

flaneurs_lobster said:

As a database designer I would just like to say that no-one would should have a data element for "number of debit card transactions today". That value would should always be derived dynamically, so any limit is set outwith the data.

Agreed but that depends on the database platform that you're dealing with.

Stacks of legacy systems have fixed field lengths. Either by design or oversight.

And this, as you're aware, can cause issues when the unforeseen becomes a reality.

e.g. Y2K (where no-one had the foresight to add CC to YY when systems were developed in the 70s, 80s and (incredibly) 90s meant a lot of work for some.

flaneurs_lobster

Patrington said:

And this, as you're aware, can cause issues when the unforeseen becomes a reality.

e.g. Y2K (where no-one had the foresight to add CC to YY when systems were developed in the 70s, 80s and (incredibly) 90s meant a lot of work for some.

Yep, building those systems in the 80's and then fixing them for Y2K in the 90's paid for my first house. We really should have millennia more often.