The quest for a sensible call centre continues...

Its day two of my quest to transfer all of my standing orders from my now defunct mortgage account to my brand sparkling new current account and once again I run into red tape inspired difficulties...

This morning I received two letters from companies who I pay money to every month advising me that my old bank has advised them that I've kicked them into touch with relish and that now they won't be paying my standing orders anymore.

This is OK by me as I now have contact numbers for two of the accounts that I couldn't trace yesterday, so feeling rather smug and with my new account details stuck to the monitor in front of me I ring the first one - an insurance company.

We go through the usual name and address rubbish and then the lady asks me for details of my password, I tell her I didn't know I had a password for an insurance policy, a small insurance policy at that, she's adamant that I do and that she can't go any further until I tell her it, I tell her I haven't a clue.

She then asks if I've got the policy number, I tell her no but I have got a letter from her company asking me to contact them for details of my new bank account, I explain that all I want to do is make arrangements to pay money to them, she asks if I know how much the policy is worth, I tell her that I don't have that information with me but all I want to do is set up another standing order - she can't help me she says, ring back when I've got my security question answer, I hang up cursing her fekkin company and its security questions and decide to wait until the next payment is missed and they write again, my reply in writing is going to fester for another month and it will be a classic among the "fuck off" letters that I've written in the past.


So I ring the second company who have written to me, its a credit card company, I go into the automated system and wait for seven minutes before talking to a human.

They ask me for my name and address rubbish as usual and then ask me for two details from my password.

I can't remember it.

I hardly ever use this account online and I've got the password written down at home, but I'm in the office.

I guess what the password might be but i'm wrong. I explain that I'm not trying to scam them and that all I want to do is make arrangements to pay money to them, but they are having none of it, no password, no standing order setting up.

I slam the phone down again and shock everyone in the office by asking out loud how fekkin hard can it be to pay money to people and how the fekkin hell can a scam work if you're a stranger paying money into someone elses account.

This task of changing accounts is proving tiresome and may yet test my patience to the limit, I try again tomorrow.