I seem to attract the worst sort of bankers, don’t I?
On my way to the LIDL this morning, I stopped off at the Credit Agricole to check the automatic payments on my account. And the monthly payments to my bank in Belgium and my bank in Canada STILL haven’t been paid.
In the bank I got to see an assistant, and he confirmed that although all of ly accounts are now held at the bank here in Granville, the monthly payments referred to above have never been made.
Consequently I insisted on seeing the manager. And when he was finally free and I saw him, I told him precisely what I thought of his bank. And I was impressed with how much polite but offensive French I could conjure up on the spur of the moment.
What made it worse was what happened once he telephoned his International Department and they said that International Dorect Debits can’t be transferred between branches, but need to be cancelled and restarted. And when I asked him why his assistant hadn’t told me that when I went in in May to transfer my account, he didn’t have a reply.
With the heat from my comments on his remarks, they’ll be having the painters in to redecorate his office. I was one very unhappy bunny, as you can imagine. I’ve just been for two months in Canada and the USA spending money that I ought to have had but didn’t – and if you recall, I didn’t stint on my expenditure out there.
I made an appointment for after lunch to continue our discussion, and I went off to LIDL where I bought the bread for freezing, some ice cube sacks, and the wrong size of plastic bag in which to store my frozen stuff.
During my lunch break I gathered up some papers to take back to the bank, and it’s just as well because they had absolutely nothing on their files and, for some reason, they were extremely reluctant to telephone the bank in Pionsat to obtain the information.
The information for the Belgian bank was easy, but for Canada, not so. On the transit form that I took down, the reference number was 16 digits and there was only space on their computerised form for 9.
Having run round in circles for half an hour, I insisted that they telephone the bank in Canada and obtain the information first-hand. Eventually, they agreed and here we encountered the unfortunate fact that Canada’s clocks haven’t gone back yet, so they weren’t open.
I had to loiter in the bank for 45 minutes before the call went through, and after being thoroughly interrogated as to my movements in Canada, they gave me the account details. A 9-digit number indeed, “but you’ll need the 7-digit branch code”.
“I wondered what that box of 7 digits was for on the form just before the space for the account number” said the bank clerk. I despaired.
So now I’ll have to wait until the beginning of December to see if the payments have gone through. But I’m way beyond being annoyed about all of this, as you can imagine.
As I left the bank, I bumped into Brigitte who was loitering around outside. Three times this week, that is. We went for a coffee and a walk around the docks. I came back here and crashed out for half an hour – after all, I’ve walked over 118% of my daily activity today.
I’d had a rough night last night. Tossing and turning for much of it. And I’d been on my travels too – driving a coach on a holiday feeder service. I’d returned home to find that someone else was trying to go out on a feeder but there was no oil in his coach and he was annoyed to say the least. I said that he could go in mine, which somehow I had managed to park in my room in this hostel where I was staying.
What was ironic about this was that I was idly surfing the internet looking for photos of Ford coaches and there in glorious technicolour was a photo of a coach that I used to drive when I worked for Salopia Saloon Coaches in 1979. It’s a small world.
Having done well over 100% of my daily routine, I’ve exempted myself from going for a walk. I’m going for an early night to recover from today’s exertions.
