Novacon, and combusion, and banking
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♥Nov. 9th, 2015 // 08:05 pm♥
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Ladies, are we frock swapping next weekend? I have a bag o'stuff, as does ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif) helenx. Anyone else up for it?
In other news, today we finished the first half of the leylandii: hurrah! It now no longer looks as though we randomly started in the middle of the row and worked outwards!
(It wasn't actually random, it was the place with the fewest plants between the lawn and the hedge.)
Then, the wind being right, we burnt them.
I also decided that it was nearly as easy to move the contents of the other bonfire pile over to the existing fire as it was to pull it apart and make a new fire, so that's all done now as well.
In Adventures In Bureaucracy, the Charity bank account is with Barclays, and on Friday I received a Very Large cheque for the charity, from a company that apparently still operates in the stone ages* and does things like posting cheques to people, done on their special cheque printing machine (seriously, wtf? Is it just that they foolishly bought a few pallets of the custom paper and now feel they must use it? I can't decide if it's more or less bizarre than the people who do a BACS transfer and then print and post a remittance advice, thus telling you that they've sent you some money a week or so after you saw it appear in your online banking).
* Although not as antiquated as the people behind direct debits. Why on earth do I need to write the address of 'my' branch on the form? More to the point, what is it? It's not on my bank statements. My cheque book contains the address but -- wtf -- not the post code. Googling for "'bank name' + 'street name'" gives two results at opposite end of the country, and only the one that's obviously wrong includes a postcode in the excerpt on the search results page....
I was going to spend an hour and a bit driving into town, walking from the carpark to the bank, paying it in, and then reversing the process, but it was pissing down and I couldn't be arsed. On Saturday, I needed to go to the Post Office anyway. "Hmmm," I said to Mike, "Is Barclays one of the banks that I can do transactions at the Post Office?" He looked it up and reported that the Post Office website said I could indeed pay in cheques at a Post Office but needed a Special Envelope, which I could order from Barclays (unlike, say, the bank that we use personally: there you also need a Special Envelope, but you can get them from the Post Office. Natch.).
Although I didn't have a Special Envelope, and being a cynical sort, while I was there I asked at the Post Office. "You can pay in cheques to Barclays accounts here," I was told, "as long as your paying in slip has a barcode on it." Hmm. (Mine does not.)
Today, I decided that I really had better get it paid in, and anyway Mike needed a chainsaw chain sharpening, so I went into town and visited Barclays. While I was there, I casually said to the Nice Young Man "So, is there any way I can pay cheques into this account without coming into the branch?" Well, he explained, there was a pilot scheme, but it had been a pilot scheme for quite a long time now.... "So I couldn't pay it in, say, at the Post Office?" Oh, there was something about the Post Office, he'd just check with his colleague. Apparently, I can pay cheques in at the Post Office as long as I had a special Paying In slip, which I could get from the Post Office.
Sigh. To give up or to face the torment that is offshored customer service helplines...? Ok, that's not actually a question, is it? |
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