Paying household bills will not be a burden this winter for the Van der Walt family of Hastings after winning $10,000
from NZCU Baywide in its “Chill... We’ll Get the Bills” promotion.
Zelda Van der Walt and her husband Stephen were entered into the promotion when taking out a debt consolidation loan
with NZCU Baywide after moving from another lender with a higher interest rate.
“We visited the branch in Napier to get a better rate so we could save money, and now we’ve won this amazing prize - we
are so very grateful - I cried when I found out,” Zelda says.
”Honestly this could not have come at a better time as it’s been an expensive year so far,” Zelda says. “We’ve had two
wonderful weddings for close friends and our daughter is just about the turn 21 so we’re having a party. We also usually
have to save up for winter to cover the extra cost of power, so this prize is absolutely going to help out.”
Zelda says it was a complete surprise as they were entered into the draw automatically by the branch - “it was one of
those days and I was just interested in sorting out the loan and didn’t really think about any promotion,” she says.
NZCU Baywide GM Sales, Marketing and Channels, Andrew Quayle, says the promotion is special because it removes the pain
of paying bills for a while.
“The prize money is split between $5k for general bills, $2k for groceries, $1.5k for petrol, and $1.5k is allocated to
the winner’s power company.
“This time of year is always more expensive for families as they prepare for winter so we are rapt to be able to provide
some extra help so there’s some leftover cash to spend on other things,” he says.
When asking Zelda and Stephen what they would buy, there’s one answer:
“We want to save so we can become New Zealand citizens,” she says.
“We moved from South Africa ten years ago, settled in Hawke’s Bay then moved to Gisborne for my husband’s job but then
he was made redundant, so moved back. Over these years, every time we’ve tried to become citizens there’s been a
challenge and it’s been postponed. But now we have the chance to become proper Kiwis,” she says.
Zelda works as an administrator in the Corrections Psychology Department, as well as part-time in IT with Heinz-Watties.
Her husband works at Cedenco. Their three children are all in their early twenties and have spent most of their college
years in Hastings.
“We run regular promotions but it’s the first time we’ve had this type of prize that provides some support at an
expensive time of year,” adds Andy Quayle. “We’ll definitely consider running the same format again in the future.”
The promotion was open to any NZCU Baywide customer who took out a personal loan over $2,000 between 1 February and 30
April. The winner was drawn randomly from all those who had loans approved and drawn down across the 16 strong branch
network, as well as nationwide online applications.
NZCU Baywide is one of New Zealand’s largest credit unions and offers all its customers some of the best value secured
and unsecured personal and car loans in the country. For two years running it has been rated an “outstanding value”
lender by Canstar, New Zealand and Australia’s only fully interactive research service in retail and business finance.
ENDS