Who Wants to be a Millionaire

When I resigned from Barclays Bank in 2010 I had to withdraw all my shares from various employee savings schemes. An unintended consequence of this was that I had to pay back the Income Tax I had “avoided” by buying the shares out of pre-tax salary. And this was done by the simple expedient of sufficient shares being sold to pay the tax bill, and I received a certificate for the remainder.
Trouble was, that in order to just break even I needed to sell those remaining shares at a price of over £5. As the share price has resolutely refused to rise over £2 in the last ten years, I have done nothing. I did receive the odd dividend cheque, but only enough to treat us to a Chinese takeaway twice a year!
The powers that be were obviously fed up sending me these small cheques, so last year they introduced a scheme whereby any dividends would be in the form of extra shares.
Now, I naively thought that these extra shares would be held in some sort of online account, so was quite surprised to receive this certificate in the post! Apparently, if you already have a certificate, any dividend shares will also be in the form of a certificate! I really can’t see how that is more efficient than sending a cheque.
What is particularly galling is that had the dividend shares been purchased on practically any other day, I would have got twice as many shares. As it was, the price they actually dealt at meant I was about 10p short to get the two shares and had to settle for one and a carried forward balance.
I can hardly wait for next years dividend to see what riches I receive then!