At last, a win in your battle over premium bonds
M.C. writes: My dear wife passed away in February. She had £1,000 in premium bonds, so I wrote to National Savings & Investments (NS&I) with her death certificate. I heard nothing more until April, when a prize cheque for £25 arrived. It was made out to my wife, so I returned it, but six weeks later NS&I said staff could not find the original correspondence.
WHAT a chapter of errors. First you received a prize cheque that could not be banked as your wife had died. Then NS&I admitted it had lost the earlier correspondence, though you gave staff a copy of the letter they sent you to acknowledge that they had been informed of your wife’s death.
But more was to come. You had asked for the bonds to be transferred to you, but nobody had told you that you had to complete a particular NS&I form to apply for this. So, you jumped through this further hoop and sent the completed form in May.
Four weeks later, NS&I replied.
But instead of transferring the bonds and issuing a new prize cheque, staff decided to treat your claim as a complaint and offered to put you in touch with the Ombudsman. So, six months after you lost your wife, you still had no idea when you would received her £1,000 investment or the £25 prize.
I asked officials at NS&I headquarters to look into what had gone wrong, and I am glad to say they moved faster than I could have hoped.
Premium bonds can stay in prize draws for up to a year after the holder dies, but they cannot be transferred. They can only be encashed. So NS&I has redeemed your wife’s holding and has sent £1,000 straight to your bank account.
The officials were frank. With refreshing honesty, they told me: ‘We did not scan the copy of Mr C’s late wife’s death certificate into our system, and thus Mrs C’s death was not registered with us. This was a case of human error.’
When you expressed your disbelief at this, NS&I treated the matter as a complaint and two different departments became involved – just as the pandemic meant that both teams were short of staff in the office.
The team handling the complaint then contacted you ahead of the bereavement team that was meant to put things right, and this added a further layer of confusion.
As well as the £1,000 in your bank account, you now have a £25 prize cheque issued in your name.
NS&I has also paid you £31 in lost interest, which it calculates at a very generous 8 per cent, and it has added a further £100 as a gesture of goodwill to apologise for the distress, upset and inconvenience caused.