George Osborne has announced that £10bn of pensioner bonds have been sold since they were launched in January, making them the “most successful savings product ever”. But it has not been a happy experience for everyone, with a number of savers having problems with the government’s savings body.
One pensioner has accused National Savings & Investments of an “appalling lack of customer care” after it lost the £10,000 cheque he sent – and then failed to respond to his letters requesting help in finding his money. Another claimed his money seemed to have disappeared into a “black hole” at NS&I.
Like thousands of retirees, Oliver Murray and his wife both applied for NS&I’s long-awaited “65+ guaranteed growth bonds” (to give them their official name) when they went on sale on 15 January. The NS&I website collapsed under the weight of demand for the best-buy one- and three-year bonds paying 2.8% and 4% respectively. On 12 March the chancellor confirmed that £10bn-worth of the bonds had been sold to more than 825,000 savers.
But at the time of the launch, some customers reported having double payments taken from bank accounts, and others told of lost cheques. Murray’s story suggests the fallout from the initial problems has continued. This week the NS&I website was warning of “a very high volume of calls through to our contact centre”.
Both Murray and his wife Catherine, who live in Belfast, applied to put £10,000 in a three-year bond, and filled in the forms to accompany their cheques. Catherine’s bond was opened without a problem, but her husband has received no notification, and more than six weeks later the money has still not appeared in his NS&I account.
His current account provider, Nationwide, has confirmed that the cheque has been cashed by NS&I, but he says no one can tell him where his money is. In its most recent letter to him, NS&I indicated that the matter might not be resolved for a further six weeks.
“The customer care from National Savings has been nothing short of appalling, and the approach in rectifying the problem has been non-existent,” Murray says. “All you read about in the money pages is people falling victim to fraudsters. People want to know their savings are being looked after, and it simply isn’t good enough to say ‘We’ll get back to you in six weeks’ time’.”
The couple are not the only ones affected. Dr M Lynch also emailed Money this week to ask what was going on at NS&I. She wrote: “My husband had two £10,000 cheques cashed by NS&I (for a one-year and a three-year bond) at the end of January, but despite telephone calls, the exchange of nearly 20 emails and two letters to N&SI – and despite having provided them with scanned copies of his application forms and cheques, and confirmation of his bank showing when both cheques were presented – he is still awaiting the paperwork for his three-year bond.”
She added: “The most recent communication tells him that, unless he provides photocopies of both sides of the cashed cheques, they will not take his case forward. Pensioners are finding out that their life savings have disappeared into a ‘black hole’ at NS&I.”
A spokesman for NS&I says: “We have successfully processed a very high volume of postal applications, and customers can be assured that they will receive interest on the bond from the date we first receive their cheque. We are in the process of resolving Mr Murray’s complaint to his satisfaction, and this will happen this week.”
The bonds are available until 15 May 2015 by post, telephone or online at nsandi.com. There is a limit of £10,000 per bond per person – a total of £20,000 (or £40,000 per couple).
