The Top Regular Savers Discussion Thread

Pickledonionlover

trickydicky14 said:

Pickledonionlover said:

Pickledonionlover said:

Principality RS Maturity failures 

Having ten currently running I submitted three Maturity Instructions over the weekend to mature into further RS.

All three have been refused by message and that's my first time for refusals.

I'll be interested to see if those type of accounts I've been refused for are part of the postal offering when they drop through my letter box.

So I've now received the postal maturity options for these three accounts I've been refused.

And guess what they include the type of account I've been refused for.

If you're reading this Principality staff - save yourself grief and paper by not giving us the literature or online options for accounts we're not able to have from now 👍 

If the form clearly states you are only allowed one account of each type why should they change anything. It's just a generic form with the added text 'one of each type'.

They've included separate leaflets with all the T&C's of the accounts that we are ineligible to open.

Anyway I'm out of here.

clairec666

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.

flaneurs_lobster

clairec666 said:

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 might be right to get a little perspective here, each one of those 6mth RS accounts gives a return of £26, no-one is funding their second yacht from this deal.

Bridlington1

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.

clairec666

Bridlington1 said:
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.

Fair point - maybe it's one of those "have a look at this while you're not busy" jobs.

Bridlington1 said:

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 know a fair bit about coding, but nothing about how banks commission their IT systems. If it's not done in-house, then any minor issues (and letting a small proportion of customers gain some extra accounts is probably considered minor) are not going to get looked at.

flaneurs_lobster said:

It might be right to get a little perspective here, each one of those 6mth RS accounts gives a return of £26, no-one is funding their second yacht from this deal.

I quite agree - hence why Principality have mostly left us alone until now.

OwnedByACat

Sorry if this has been noted before, but I just got a survey from Chase that quizzed me extensively about what I want from regular savers. Seems like they'll be bringing out a product

s71hj

clairec666 said:

Bridlington1 said:
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.

Fair point - maybe it's one of those "have a look at this while you're not busy" jobs.

Bridlington1 said:

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 know a fair bit about coding, but nothing about how banks commission their IT systems. If it's not done in-house, then any minor issues (and letting a small proportion of customers gain some extra accounts is probably considered minor) are not going to get looked at.

flaneurs_lobster said:

It might be right to get a little perspective here, each one of those 6mth RS accounts gives a return of £26, no-one is funding their second yacht from this deal.

I quite agree - hence why Principality have mostly left us alone until now.

In my old job we had "do this type of thing during quiet period" lists of tasks. I created the lists for the team! . 

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!