h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Doh!
"Dont try to spend your dividends yet"
Now they tell me! Nearly four hours after I spent them.

Dividends? My £200,000 worth of Christine Hamilton gained me the massive sum of £1.26 - either that or I didn't recieve any dividends at all I think it's the latter

Well this will be interesting cause I too have spent all of mine and transferred my stock holding.

Well dont spend it all at once, or perhaps dont spend it at all.
Nice to see the wads on the mini-league.

TSF

must type faster

I thought that Christine Hamilton was a good bet too and I had £250000 invested in her. Do you think it might be a mistake concerning her.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/h2/h2.cgi?thread=%3Cmod.1050053183-2828.3% 40forum2.thdo.bbc.co.uk%3E&find=%3Cmod.1050053183-2828.3% 40forum2.thdo.bbc.co.uk%3E&board=bbcthree.celebdaq1&sort=Te

seems likely (ps I put spaces in after the %s and before the 40s to stop it from stretching the screen)

so wahts happened then? i went there to check my shares, and it wouldnt let me in!!

It looks like the dividends paid out were wrong but lots of people had spent the money before it was noticed. Wouldn't want to have to sort that one out.

do they tell you when you get dividends? if they do, i dont think 'ive ever got any

They will send you an email every friday listing what payout you got for each share and total dividend profit - but you have to sign up for it (and to do that you need access to your portfolio)

If you ever notice that you have some extra money to spend on a Friday morning then you've been paid a dividend.

oops! I already spent mine!

spent mine at 9am this morning

Might mention something about it on the programme tonight, but as I'm not in and a skinflint I'll watch the webcast.

A STATEMENT FROM THE CELEBDAQ CHIEF ENGINEER - 15TH APRIL 2003

In recent weeks, numerous improvements have been made to our operational procedures in order to ensure that dividend payments are paid promptly and that the dividend email is delivered sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, due to the rapid pace at which such improvements are being implemented, Friday's dividend payments were wrong due to a simple but costly bug in the programme that is responsible for paying dividends.

Subsequently, instead of adding the dividend amount individually for each issue in your portfolio to determine the money rightfully earned, the programme added payments that were themselves cumulative totals of all issues previously processed.

This problem would have been quite noticeable to those players who had many issues in their portfolios. Where a player had shares in only one issue, then the cumulative total was correct.

Furthermore, the dividend earnings summary did not show the current correct total for ownership.

Unfortunately, by the time this problem was identified and promptly rectified, the miscalculation had been made and many of the emails had already been sent.

In order to ensure a level playing field, we attempted to 'recover' the difference between the miscalculation and the actual dividend payment that players should have received.

But to complicate matters further, many players had already reinvested their earnings.

Therefore, as we were unable to recover the difference in full from the current cash value, we were left with the less than desirable but necessary task of recovering this money.

To this end, some players have now acquired a debt at the Celebdaq Central Reserve. This debt will be recovered from subsequent dividend payments.

However, the Celebdaq Board is currently reviewing possible solutions to permit early debt repayment so as not to disadvantage those players who have acquired very large debts.

I would like to add at this point that this debt should be considered an interest free loan. Very little high street banks would be equally as competitive.

The dividend payment problem has since been rectified and I would like to apologise on behalf of the technical team for any inconvenience caused.

I see to "owe" them rather a lot. I fear my league position is, er, artificially inflated. We'll see on Friday.

Well if you just day trade you wont get much in divi's anyway so it wont matter

Those of us unscathed by last weeks errrrr irregularities will endeavour to keep your top spot warm Otto!

Oops!
Unless of course we mess up badly and sink like a stone

TSF