Good News...Bad News...

Okay, so the good news is that after waiting so long to get a working land line back, a British
Telecom engineer came along (even ringing me thirty minutes beforehand to let me know that he was on the way) and managed to do in ten minutes what NTL had failed to do in ten weeks!

HOORAH!

And a telephoto lens for my shiny new camera also arrived whilst I was at home, so double bonus for not having to go to the sorting office across the local dodgy council estate to pick it up!

The reason I wanted to switch to NTL was because I got suckered in by all the junk mail that they sent me promising how much I could save on my monthly service charge as as an existing cable customer it would already included in my bill and not be an extra charge.

What they FRIGGING FORGOT TO MENTION was that whilst there is no service charge per se, there is something that they call a tariff charge which is ABSO-FRIGGING-LUTELY THE SAME BLOODY THING BUT WITH A DIFFERENT NAME!

So I wouldn't have saved much at all and I'm just so happy to finally have a land line again.

And my TiVo lives again! Yay! No more "Recorded BBC1 9-10pm" nameless programmes!

But with every silver lining, there comes a cloud...

My cloud happened on Friday night when I logged into my bank account online to pay one of my bills and found that I was overdrawn by a VERY large amount!

Okay so, this might be a regular sight for some people but for me, was most definitely not!

I didn't even realise that I had an overdraft limit on this account (having never been overdrawn) and someone had cleaned out what was left of my account and then some!

I was worried.
I tried to rationalise the loss. Thoughts rushed through my head:

- Did I buy something and completely forget about it?" No, way. Too much money gone.
- Had my mortgage payment (my largest monthly expense) gone through two or three times???" No, I checked, just the once.
- Had my nice new camera actually cost me a lot more than I realised?" No, I'm not that stupid! (Even if I was blonde....once. )

Bugger! What the f#@k was going on???!!!

I tried to ring my bank's help line but it had closed 20 minutes before. So great! Now I had to
sleep on the worry too! Well, unsurprisingly, I didn't sleep all that well.

I got up early and rang them up as soon as they had opened.

"Hmmm, yes, we can see three suspect debit card transactions. They increase in amount, each day. That's normal for someone trying to see how active the account is."

"Okay sir, it does look like internet fraud, we'll cancel your card and issue you with a new one
and the money will be back in your account on Monday afternoon."

A wave of relief flooded through me. I felt like the 'quote me happy' guy on the Direct Line
Insurance adverts. "Yes....YES....YESSSS!!!!!"
Still a bit stunned, I uttered a sincere "Thank you!" before hanging up.

Monday afternoon came. I logged on...Still no change, and no replacement card.
Tuesday. The same...
I rang my bank up again. "It can take up to ten days to refund the transactions to your account
sir."

"But, the (nice, angelic sounding) lady on Saturday told me that it would be back by yesterday afternoon"
She seemed at bit flustered. "Oh....Well, sometimes these things are done on a case-by-case basis.""Sometimes? I thought, slightly bemused.

"I can put you through to someone who can help. I'll have to confirm your identity by asking you a series of security questions before I can do so though. Is that okay?"
"Sure"
"Date of birth" Check
"Account number" Check
"Sort Code" Check.
"This is easy", I thought.
"The long number on your debit card".
"Errrmmmm, do you mean the old cancelled one or the new one that I haven't received yet?"
"Your current one"
"But it's been cancelled?"
She waited...So I read out the number of the only card I had. She went quiet for a few seconds,
then said "I'm sorry sir but you've failed the security check and I can't proceed further. You'll
have to go along to your local branch with photo ID to carry on. Goodbye"

It was THAT abrupt. She hung up!

Hmmm, so my bank is so secure (good) that even I can't deal with them over the telephone! (bad.)

So today, I popped along to the branch on Baker Street, nearest to work. I kid you not but about
a dozen people were waiting to see three bank staff!

I took one look and walked out. My lunch break wasn't THAT long! *sigh*

I'll give them another chance. Hopefully my new card will be waiting for me when I get home, I thought, so I can just ring them up and not have to wait an hour at the bank to get my money back!

So I got home and looked in my letter box. There was a letter in there but no card.

And the letter...Who was it from?

Why who else but my old best friend....NTL, charging me for a month of telephone charges for a phone that they never installed!

Photo is of Trafalgar Square, taken last week, with me fiddling with the RAW image properties to make it look less grey and boring.