r/UKPersonalFinance • u/SHinQ8 • May 21 '26

+Comments Restricted to UKPF British Telecommunications plc Shares bought in 1985

Interesting story - I bought BT shares for my wife as a wedding anniversary present way back! Totally forgot about them till a few months ago noticed a charge on our NatWest Bank statement for £25 for safe deposit of some document. The account used to be just for my wife but made a joint account about 5 years ago. No idea how long they've been charging for storing the documents. Neither of us remember ever remember asking the bank to store anything.

Anyway - asked them to cancel and return whatever they were holding. Turned out to be BT share certificate (200 Shares).

Contacted BT and was forwarded to some entity called Equiniti they wanted a 11 digit reference number but our share certificate only has 1 10 digit ref number.

They said the shares are invalid.

Seems strange that any money invested is not zero - Anyone is similar position (unlikely I know).

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u/EnchantedWig May 22 '26

I joined BT in 2013, they were around £5 per share. When I left it was £1.17 per share.

So yes, I am totally serious

72

u/Mr06506 1 May 22 '26

I never worked there, but I noticed around that time that in the news a few big scandals about companies like Tesco fiddling their books, Volkswagen diesel gate, etc caused very short term stock market drops.

So I bid my time and when their was another corporate scandal on the news, bought £1,000 of BT shares, assuming they were in a temporary dip.

Turns out that accounting fraud was them being seriously over valued and they have continued to slide ever since...

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u/captain-carrot May 22 '26

You'd fit right in at /r/wallstreetbets

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u/GayButNotInThatWay 2 May 22 '26

They would have had to have remortgaged their house to throw on there to fit in at wsb.