Why can't treasury bonds be ordered through the mail or online anymore?

My grandmother buys us grandkids bonds every year for our birthdays in addition to other gifts. For years what she has done is either order by mail, by sending a check and order form to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis or by ordering from the bank. And it worked for years. But starting at the beginning of this year, for whatever reason, everything is done online. My grandma can no longer order bonds from the bank and when she sent the form, it was returned to sender because of "no such address".

So we had to open an account on treasurydirect.gov, which took close to an hour and then search around on the nightmare of a site to try and figure out how to order gift bonds (I'm trying not to be cynical, but even as a tech oriented person, I found the site confusing and with an unnecessary amount of security "features"). Then, we found out that we don't get a paper receipt or anything for our order, it's all online. So we decided not to order because of this lack of paper trail.

Why is this change being made? And is there any way of buying bonds the old way or at least getting some sort of paper receipt?

reply to post by mossme89


They are probably selling them online for a number of reasons:
1. Cheaper and more efficient.
2. You are more likely to pay by credit card, which is what they want.
3. They can log your IP address if something goes wrong with payment.
4. They can get you to see other products and services at the same time so that your more likely to buy something else.

treasurydirect is made in such a terrible manner that I always suspected that it was designed to prevent bonds from being cashed. I have a few bond investments that have been swept under because I just hate that site so vehemently.

You can still get paper bonds with your tax refunds if that helps. I Got a few this month from my refund but there is only a few different types that you can get though.