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

kaMelo

flaneurs_lobster said:

Patrington every cloudsaid:

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.

Lol,  Every cloud......

OceanSound

flaneurs_lobster said:

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.

I assume the year 2038 problem is not as grave as Y2K? Or without adequate planning, it could be ?

enthusiasticsaver

Can we please keep the thread on topic as per original post? Thanks. 

RG2015

enthusiasticsaver said:

Can we please keep the thread on topic as per original post? Thanks. 

On a point of order, is the OP allowed any licence to deviate from the original topic?

OceanSound

RG2015 said:

enthusiasticsaver said:

Can we please keep the thread on topic as per original post? Thanks. 

On a point of order, is the OP allowed any licence to deviate from the original topic?

Was it the OP that originally deviated?

RG2015

OceanSound said:

RG2015 said:

enthusiasticsaver said:

Can we please keep the thread on topic as per original post? Thanks. 

On a point of order, is the OP allowed any licence to deviate from the original topic?

Was it the OP that originally deviated?

I have no idea, but I was referring to the immediately preceding post about 2038, not the original deviation.

PS Y2K38 may merit a new thread on the techy board.

enthusiasticsaver

OceanSound said:

RG2015 said:

enthusiasticsaver said:

Can we please keep the thread on topic as per original post? Thanks. 

On a point of order, is the OP allowed any licence to deviate from the original topic?

Was it the OP that originally deviated?

I believe you were the OP  and yes this is a grey area?   I received a message today asking me to look into the deviation on this particular thread and there have been a few grumbles recently about this happening more and more.  Interestingly one of the people grumbling about threads deviating is one of the people on this thread.  Personally  I think the OP  should be allowed some licence so on those grounds I apologise for derailing. Carry on .  I think some flexibility should be allowed particularly if the OP does not object. 

phillw

OceanSound said:
I assume the year 2038 problem is not as grave as Y2K? Or without adequate planning, it could be ?

It's impossible to say without auditing everything.

While the issue is nominally related to 32 bit unix systems (and everyone seems to be congratulating themselves at fixing all the issues by upgrading their OS), there is no knowing where "seconds since 1900 stored in a signed 32 bit integer" could have ended up.

For example, it's still supported in Visual Studio 2022 & could be used in Windows software.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-runtime-library/reference/time-time32-time64?view=msvc-170

If it's stored or transmitted anywhere, then fixing it will be equivalent to Y2K.


epoch bugs are relatively common, it's more than just 2038. GPS week rollover broke my ancient tomtom in 2019 for example.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_week_number_rollover

OceanSound

Bridlington1 said:

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.

Tried it today. 100th transaction was declined. 

The only way I could tell this was because when I checked the app this morning (before starting the double roundup payments) there were no pending transactions. 

When I check the app now it shows:

Pending (99)

I'll try and do another transaction in a couple of hours just to check it's definitely to do with the limit. Certainly seems so, otherwise, it's some coincidence to stop exactly at 99.

Earlier, I did try again after 10-15 minutes. Same result. Declined. Guess I'll wait till tomorrow, then rinse and repeat.  

Bridlington1

Why did it never occur to me before! If I'm not mistaken the 99 debit card payments limit is per current account, so you could open multiple Natwest/RBS current accounts and do 99 debit card payments from each account to fill the regular savers much quicker.

This now begs the question how many select accounts will Natwest/RBS let you open in a short space of time? I suppose this method also has the added advantage of leaving you with a string of donor accounts ripe for switching once the regular savers are filled.