It’s the weekend yay and I have lots of junk mail to catch up with. Normally this only takes 2 seconds. Virgin Media keep soliciting business and miscellaneous crappy insurance offers.
One letter sticks. It’s about the fact that I didn’t appear to have paid my mortgage for two months. Sigh. My mortgage goes out by standing order, automatically, I never have to look at it. Does anyone?
I call C&G bracing myself for a protracted time on the phone. Miraculously I get through to someone straight away. It turns out the bank cancelled the DD. Sigh. I only recently had an issue with them where they took too much out. Sigh.
The letter I received from C&G mentioned that if I continued with my arrears I’d be stung with a fairly hefty fee. Sigh. I paid the outstanding balance over the phone but in parting the guy at the other end mentioned that it wasn’t totally out of the question that I might get charged additional interest for the unpaid monies. Sigh.
This of course was out of the question and likely to lead to me having to waste an hour of someone’s time in visiting the bank to sort it out. He wasn’t able to say for sure and neither was he able to say how I would know it had happened. Would it appear as an extra payment or just added to the outstanding balance? Sigh. He did mention that with the interest rates at all time low it wasn’t likely to be much money. Even if it is only one pence it is too much and would engender aggravation for both me and the bank.
It all come down to outdated systems. Outdated systems mean lots of manual processing and especially manual processing of errors. I bet a bank could get rid of 30% of its staff, and therefore costs by improving its systems. Probably too big a task leaving us the punters to pick up the bill in terms of greying hair, loss of hair and increased waistlines caused by comfort eating to alleviate the stress of it all.
To alleviate some of this stress I’ve just gone through the pile of junk mail and where there was a freepost envelope stuck the junk into this to return to the sender. Barclaycard specifically. Unfortunately there wasn’t a freepost envelop in the Virgin Media mailer and they are the worst culprits. They must spend a fortune on Direct Mail. I thought people weren’t allowed to send junk DM. My name must be on a list somewhere. Sigh.
Other truly inspirational posts with titles that include the word “bank”
Nice picture of crocii near the Embankment
Lloyds bank – 2 out of 7 servers down
My first Banksy
And if you’re wondering about the picture of the flower. Something to raise a smile:) One has to you know.
