Premium Bond Winner ?

refluxer

lpgm said:

Has anyone been paid an extra prize they weren’t expecting this month? 

Do your kids have Premium Bonds ? Mine have a modest amount that win occasionally and the subsequent prize payment to my account sometimes catches me out

eskbanker

RG2015 said:

lpgm said:

Has anyone been paid an extra prize they weren’t expecting this month? 

I don’t see how expectations would be relevant. You have either won or not won.

Presumably the meaning was 'being paid a prize that wasn't notified/announced in the initial post-draw results'?

As I understand it, there is a second phase within which prizes won by bonds that turn out to be invalid are reallocated, so this does happen, but I don't know the volumes involved....

lpgm

eskbanker said:

RG2015 said:

lpgm said:

Has anyone been paid an extra prize they weren’t expecting this month? 

I don’t see how expectations would be relevant. You have either won or not won.

As I understand it, there is a second phase within which prizes won by bonds that turn out to be invalid are reallocated, so this does happen, but I don't know the volumes involved....

Interesting. Yes, I won two prizes and was paid them earlier in the month. Then on Monday I was paid another prize. My account still says I won just two. And the payment reference number for the extra prize is lower than the ones for the other two. 

RG2015

Yes, this is interesting. However it is surprising that NS&I would pay out a prize without notifying the winner.

I always get an email notification, albeit several days after the information is available on the app or online.

lpgm, I guess the reference on your bank statement clearly identifies the source of the credit.

Primrose

I wonder if these invalid prizes are possibly because of the large number of people who have sadly died during the Coronavirus pandemic and their affairs are only now belatedly being sorted out due to delays and backlogs in the system, so their  Premium Bond records are only just being cancelled ?    A lot of the population hold these bonds.   My understanding was that they continue to be valid in the draw for a certain number of months after death but this could have been changed.

eskbanker

Excess deaths in England over the pandemic period have been about 14%, according to data accessible via https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-in-england-weekly-reports, so a large number of excess deaths (~100K) needs to be seen in the context of the usual large volume of deaths (~750K).

Bonds can remain in the draw for 12 months after death, but as you say, there will undoubtedly be cases where NS&I aren't notified particularly promptly - however, reallocation of prizes isn't a new thing, and hence pre-pandemic discussion of this on threads such as https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5962485/premium-bonds

lpgm

Thanks for the replies. I guess this prize is a reallocated one then. I presume I'll hear from NS&I at some point. It's odd they've paid it to me without updating my NS&I account, but perhaps that's a reflection on their technology. Hmm, unless it's appeared in the month the original bond was drawn... 

2010

A relative of mine received a "prize" of £25 last week that they didn`t "win" nor with a bond they owned.
The accompanying letter explained that whoever had won it was not eligible to win it and it has been awarded to them.
No other explanation.

pbcpdeveloper

I suspect one of your relatives bonds will have been drawn but all of the prizes will have been allocated before they got to it so it fell into the surplus pile. When one of the original winners was found to be invalid the surplus bonds got used and your relatives bond got picked. 

2010

pbcpdeveloper said:

I suspect one of your relatives bonds will have been drawn but all of the prizes will have been allocated before they got to it so it fell into the surplus pile. When one of the original winners was found to be invalid the surplus bonds got used and your relatives bond got picked. 

So ERNIE generates more winning numbers than what are actually needed in case some are ineligible.