NSI Guaranteed Income Bonds - payment problem

kantblue

Hi All, to answer some of the questions.

Halifax's limit for daily transfers OR debit card payments is £25,000.

Whilst they could have a done a Faster Transfer payment for up to £250,000 with ID in branch, this doesn't help because you can't purchase one of the Guaranteed Income Bonds by bank transfer - it has to be by Debit card - and Halifax won't allow this to be more than £25,000. I find this frustrating because:

1. Its my money - as pointed out airline tickets first class to New York could break the £25,000 limit for Debit Card Payments.

2. If this is due to money laundering rules, how come it doesn't seem to be impacting the scammers!

I don't normally take too much notice of TrustPilot reviews as they seem to skew towards the negative, but the NSI ones are spectacularly poor at 89% one star reviews. Only allowing payments by Debit Card for new accounts without any option for spreading payments over a few days seems an extraordinarly poor way to operate.

I have setup a Raisin account, am going to give it some more thought but I think I'm ruling out NSI for now.

Thanks for the replies.

kantblue

PloughmansLunch

As previously mentioned, if you have or set up a direct saver you can bank transfer in, then internal transfer from there to fund a growth or income bond that way.

I was told by counter staff that the £250k Lloyds Banking Group limit was clearing per working day per branch (so if made on a saturday morning you couldn't make another payment monday without traveling to another branch), but you can also do an in-branch CHAPS payment @£17 for higher amounts.

Flugelhorn

agree Direct Saver is the way to go and bank transfers into that are acknowledged by email within a couple of hours 

kantblue

Well that wasn't much fun - finally opened a Direct Saver and over a few days transferred money in.

Now I'm ready to purchase Guaranteed Income Bond, but after multiple login problems I can't see a way to transfer from Direct Saver to the Guaranteed Income Bond. If I select Apply Now to open a new account, the website times out with an error message every time. Have tried it on different PCs/Browsers etc and its always the same.

Anyone else find the NSANDI website quite poor - and I suspect that the creating a new GIB account will take me to the payment by debit card page.

Someone said you could Transfer OUT from a direct saver into a Guaranteed Income Bond account but I can't see how.

I'm tempted just to transfer all the money back out and give up with NSANDI - you can get rates close to 3.9 with some easy access accounts but I need to check the restrictions.

Would be great if someone can outline the process to transfer from a Direct Saver into a single, new, Guaranteed Income Bond!

Any advice would be gratefully received.

BooJewels

Sorry, I haven't done it myself - my cash was in income bonds and they won't transfer online from there, so I had to send in a paper form.  I just know what I read on the web site and what they told me over the phone:  

"If you have an NS&I Direct Saver, you can apply online for a Guaranteed Income Bond and pay for it from your Direct Saver."

I had difficulty with one of their online forms, which hung at the same question every time and found the only browser it would progress with was Microsoft Edge.  So I too have found the web site problematic. 

Band7

kantblue said:

 

Someone said you could Transfer OUT from a direct saver into a Guaranteed Income Bond account but I can't see how.

Can't help with your time-out issue but transfer of money from Direct Saver to Guaranteed Income Bond is possible according to NS&I

Band7

Have just tried to open a Guaranteed Income Bond in Chrome browser. No problems at all, very smooth application, and there is definitely an option for making a deposit from an NS&I Direct Saver.

Band7

How to do it, all with Chrome browser but should work the same with other browsers:

1. Log into your NS&I account
   
   
2. In separate browser window, go to the Guaranteed Growth Bond page. Click on Get started and follow the instructions

PloughmansLunch

kantblue said:

Well that wasn't much fun - finally opened a Direct Saver and over a few days transferred money in.

Now I'm ready to purchase Guaranteed Income Bond, but after multiple login problems I can't see a way to transfer from Direct Saver to the Guaranteed Income Bond. If I select Apply Now to open a new account, the website times out with an error message every time. Have tried it on different PCs/Browsers etc and its always the same.

Anyone else find the NSANDI website quite poor - and I suspect that the creating a new GIB account will take me to the payment by debit card page.

Someone said you could Transfer OUT from a direct saver into a Guaranteed Income Bond account but I can't see how.

I'm tempted just to transfer all the money back out and give up with NSANDI - you can get rates close to 3.9 with some easy access accounts but I need to check the restrictions.

Would be great if someone can outline the process to transfer from a Direct Saver into a single, new, Guaranteed Income Bond!

Any advice would be gratefully received.

I had a lot of trouble getting around this on laptop and phone - chrome, brave, Firefox, safari etc on and none worked. I’d previously logged in then after clicking ‘apply now’ just got a partial blue progress bar and nothing ever happened. Try applying for one without being logged in and see if that helps - I got several pages further before being asked to log in to confirm personal details and everything went smoothly after that. 

kantblue

Thanks for all the replies, finally got it done - at least I hope I did

I followed Ploughmanslunch's advice and tried it without logging in first and it went through OK, still a bit confusing because even on the final payment page the wording still says 'You can only pay by Debit Card' even though there is tick box that lets you pay from a Direct Saver - quite poor wording IHMO.

If I logged in first and then tried to purchase a Guaranteed Income Bond, the website always timed out after a short time - odd behaviour - maybe a programming glitch ?

Cheers and thanks