The Old Regular Savers Discussion Thread 28/12/24-29/1/26

Kim_13

shirley999 said:

Principality

They would make it more manageable for themselves if they cut renewals in half by having 12-month terms instead of 6 months.  Might also halve the number of posts on here.

6 monthers may receive a higher fixed rate than 12 month accounts would (and they do if we compare them to the Christmas Regular Saver or the standard Regular Saver bond) therefore I'm happy for them to continue.

Those who are worried about the extra work can choose not to open the account.

allegro120

Bridlington1 said:

clairec666 said:

spreadsheeterapple said:

shirley999 said:

Principality

They would make it more manageable for themselves if they cut renewals in half by having 12-month terms instead of 6 months.  Might also halve the number of posts on here.

Well 6-monthers do have legitimate uses for 'normal' life, e.g. one coming out in summer for holidays, and one near xmas shopping week, or one you can start in Feb when you've recovered from xmas spending which then matures just the right time for school uniform shopping. 
I have to admit to putting them up to the idea when answering a past survey, sorry about that !

And to be fair to them, they do offer a 12-month regular saver, i.e. the Christmas one, at a decent rate, although it's not available all year round. Still, better than a lot of other providers.

If, as it seems, Principality are getting strict on multiple regular savers, then they're well within their rights to do so - we've had a lot of luck with their loopholes and it was fun while it lasted. Presumably they have been aware of this for a while, and have weighed up the costs of adding a few extra lines of code to their system (IF customer has this issue already, disable this options, ELSE allow this option, etc.) but I'm surprised they're tackling the problem with manual intervention on each account, surely paying the staff that are handling this will cost them more in the long run.

It would depend, whilst I don't know the ins and outs of their systems I would assume there would be a noteworthy cost associated with removing the option to convert the account into a new RS specifically for maturing accounts where the user already holds the RS already or possibly isn't possible with their current systems so might require a more widespread IT upgrade.

The other factor at play is how much other workload have the staff got on? If staff have, say, an hour of spare time each dotted across the working day without any work to do, getting these staff to spend that hour manually checking maturity instructions isn't going to cost Principality BS anything as the staff would be sat doing nothing in that time so the end result is the staff are busier but less people are getting hold of duplicate accounts without any extra cost to the building society.

Moreover if there is a big push to manually intervene and close duplicate accounts now you'll inevitably get fewer instances of people having duplicate accounts to check given you're going to be trimming the collections of those who already have duplicate accounts and people are less likely to bother to select the option to roll over into a new RS if they've been refused in the past.

I'm only speculating but doing such the IT upgrade necessary to disable the option to roll over into a new RS where the user already holds that RS might have a sizable cost associated with it, or at least one that is greater than the cost of manually intervening.

I've posted earlier that I received only one rejection out of two (both instructed on the same day).  I thought another one will follow in few minutes, but it didn't.  This supports your theory of random check (they have stepped up now).

where_are_we

trickydicky14 - "Do me a favour, PBS have fed us so many carrots over the past few years you should be able to see in the dark. Just take on board the party is over and move on. It was great whilst it lasted thanks PBS."
As a mutual Leonard Cohen fan, perhaps his song "Closing time"  is appropriate!

trickydicky14

where_are_we said:

trickydicky14 - "Do me a favour, PBS have fed us so many carrots over the past few years you should be able to see in the dark. Just take on board the party is over and move on. It was great whilst it lasted thanks PBS."
As a mutual Leonard Cohen fan, perhaps his song "Closing time"  is appropriate!

And it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops.

jameseonline

Cweb said:

dcs34 said:

Principality
… would it be reasonable for Principality to say that customer was knowingly trying to circumnavigate the rules - and might risk having all open duplicate accounts closed?

Previous actions would suggest not. Those who deliberately manipulated URLs to open long since publicly closed issues just had those closed (with interest paid) and didn’t have their multiple issues of the current versions open touched.

Whose to say future stances they take with any bending of the rules posses a risk.

Manipulated URLs?, erm nope, people just went through maturity options given by Principality through the website when logged in 

jameseonline

Stargunner said:

It was only a matter of time before Principality became aware of this.
It is quite possible that a report highlighted that they have 3 or 4 times as many active RS accounts than they have members.
it is also possible that a member of their staff could browse this forum.

Doubt they've suddenly became aware of the multiple issue issue, they just probably thought something along the lines of can we actually afford to keep letting people have multiple accounts?, that &/or it's taken them a while to close the loophole 

jameseonline

cricidmuslibale said:

Assuming Principality are going to remain very strict in preventing any of their savers from having more than one Regular Saver of the same issue from now onwards, it would be very helpful if the ‘entirely legitimate’ maturity options that the saver is allowed to choose from were more attractive in terms of their interest rates, please!

At present, the currently available maturity fixed rate bonds are paying only c. 3.70% gross AER and the current standard Regular Saver (Issue 36) is paying a mediocre 4.85% fixed gross annual interest. This latter interest rate, although not nearly as dire as the current 4.15% & 4.25% annual interest rates payed by the standard regular savers of Coventry BS and Yorkshire BS respectively, is still rather unappealing right now when the standard regular savers of all the big banks and a good number of building societies pay annual interest rates of 5% or more. (Although quite a lot of the rates above 5% are variable to be fair.)

Just at the moment Principality seems to be applying a lot of stick and not giving a lot of carrot(s)! Their visiting Christmas reindeer are not going to be well fed this year, it appears!

Given the current state of the market why would you expect a building society to put up rates?

jameseonline

shirley999 said:

Principality

They would make it more manageable for themselves if they cut renewals in half by having 12-month terms instead of 6 months.  Might also halve the number of posts on here.

Cutting in half?, but half of 6 is 3, maths is so confusing 

clairec666

jameseonline said:

Cweb said:

dcs34 said:

Principality
… would it be reasonable for Principality to say that customer was knowingly trying to circumnavigate the rules - and might risk having all open duplicate accounts closed?

Previous actions would suggest not. Those who deliberately manipulated URLs to open long since publicly closed issues just had those closed (with interest paid) and didn’t have their multiple issues of the current versions open touched.

Whose to say future stances they take with any bending of the rules posses a risk.

Manipulated URLs?, erm nope, people just went through maturity options given by Principality through the website when logged in 

Manipulating URLs was something completely different - it was possible (and possibly still is) to open accounts which are no longer available by tweaking the URL. Somewhat naughtier than clicking on a maturity option.

GetRichOrDieSaving

jameseonline said:

Cweb said:

dcs34 said:

Principality
… would it be reasonable for Principality to say that customer was knowingly trying to circumnavigate the rules - and might risk having all open duplicate accounts closed?

Previous actions would suggest not. Those who deliberately manipulated URLs to open long since publicly closed issues just had those closed (with interest paid) and didn’t have their multiple issues of the current versions open touched.

Whose to say future stances they take with any bending of the rules posses a risk.

Manipulated URLs?, erm nope, people just went through maturity options given by Principality through the website when logged in 

This has been done in the past but the original
comment was not in relation to the Principality renewal options.