Premium Bond Winner ?

eskbanker

2010 said:

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.

I can't claim intimate knowledge of exactly how it works but I'd infer from the existence of the reallocation process that the right amount of winning numbers are generated, and that any ineligible ones are then replaced one-for-one with valid bonds.

pbcpdeveloper

No that's not the case, Ernie just generates random numbers, some of the numbers generated may not have even been purchased yet or may already have been cashed in. So the number generation process produces millions more numbers than required.

eskbanker

pbcpdeveloper said:

No that's not the case, Ernie just generates random numbers, some of the numbers generated may not have even been purchased yet or may already have been cashed in. So the number generation process produces millions more numbers than required.

Fair enough - I understood there to be (at least) two separate processes, i.e. the generation of the random numbers and then matching these up to actual bond numbers, but assumed that the first of these would be calibrated to the number of prizes actually required.  However, on thinking about it, I can see why more would be needed!

pbcpdeveloper

That's correct, the matching proces is just checking the numbers status, if its not been purchased yet, or its been cashed in, its discarded, if its valid the prize is awarded to the number and then on to the next one.  So there is a chance your bond number won a million before you even purchased it. 

I am not sure but I would assume they start with the top prize and go through the numbers  in the order they were drawn, rather than picking them randomly again from the generated numbers. That way if a £25 win was voided you just pick the next bond from the surplus file. But what happens if a £50k prize is voided ? Do people get shifted up one or does the next bond in the surplus pile get that ?

GaleSF63

pbcpdeveloper said:

That's correct, the matching proces is just checking the numbers status, if its not been purchased yet, or its been cashed in, its discarded, if its valid the prize is awarded to the number and then on to the next one.  So there is a chance your bond number won a million before you even purchased it. 

I am not sure but I would assume they start with the top prize and go through the numbers  in the order they were drawn, rather than picking them randomly again from the generated numbers. That way if a £25 win was voided you just pick the next bond from the surplus file. But what happens if a £50k prize is voided ? Do people get shifted up one or does the next bond in the surplus pile get that ?

I hope they get shifted up. It would be a bit unfair if a "reserve" ended up with a top prize instead of a number generated earlier. I got one of the late prizes a few years ago, with a note saying initial winner was ineligible. 

My winnings this year so far have given the equivalent of 0.5% interest, with only 2 more months to go. Last year was rather better, giving me about 1.8%.  All in £25s. (Maximum holding.)

Lornrussell

Big prizes are up on the website now - none for me, the only ones in my area had full holdings! 

Keep_pedalling

Must be quite rare for both big prizes to go to the same city. Bristol gets both £1M prizes.

strawb_shortcake

Keep_pedalling said:

Must be quite rare for both big prizes to go to the same city. Bristol gets both £1M prizes.

Pretty sure Bristol and neighbouring county South Glos both had one of the top prizes the last two months running too

Saga

Holding: c. £26.5K  (started Jan 2021)

Prizes: 2 x £25 Feb 2021, £25 Mar 2021 and £25 Jun 2021

Seems to match anecdotal experience of a few prizes to begin with then... nothing.

Forti

Forgive the stupid question but struggling to find an answer. Is there any impact to starting a withdrawal of my Premium Bonds today? As the prize draw now took place I believe it shouldn't impact me if I've won a prize.