On the folly of banks

I have now done two things this week that I haven’t done since November: used an ATM machine, and written a blog! (Did you miss me guys? Even just a little bit?)

The lack of blogging I can only apologise for, as I promised I wouldn’t do any more. Between deadlines, Pugwash, friends and the holidays I just didn’t find the time to sit down and say anything – but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have anything interesting to say. It’s been a crazy couple of months, let me tell you. Or rather not, or this will become an essay, and it’s really just supposed to be a quick little hello to get me back in the habit.

As for the lack of ATM-ing, well that really wasn’t my fault, or my choice. My debit card expired in November, and I assumed that my bank would send me a new one, as they have done in the past. (Why it expires at all is beyond me – my account doesn’t change at all, nor do my services, and the card still works, so why cancel it and waste energy and plastic sending me a new one? Tch.) But they didn’t. Or rather, they assured me they had, via the good old Royal Mail, but I have still yet to see any evidence of this. So, I was debit card-less for a while.

Thankfully, I have this quirky habit of taking out £100 at the beginning of every month as ‘petty cash’ for that period (I only allow myself £20/£25 a week, which works quite well) and I had done this just before the card killed itself. So, I was fine for a while, living off of that and my wonderful MasterCard when need be. And then I went home for the holidays and could mooch off of the ‘Bank of Dad’, who gave me my monthly allowance in cash rather than by direct debit. All good stuff.

But the last two weeks haven’t been so rosy. I had decided not to kick up a fuss before Xmas – just to wait and see if the replacement card ever arrived. But when I got back in January and it still hadn’t, I had a problem. The cash was running out, and the credit card was reaching its maxed out point. I even had to use my emergency backup credit card at Tesco last week. So I went to HSBC, talked to them about it and it transpired I could have a new card sent straight to my branch within three working days.

Huzzah, right? Wrong. They would only send the card to the branch where I had opened the account – in Aberdeen. Some 450 miles away. Very helpful, thanks. But, there was a way to then transfer it to Portsmouth via internal mail – I just had to listen to about 30 minutes of menu options and hold music before getting through to somebody in a call centre in Timbuktu... Anyways, in the end, I got it sorted, and yesterday I went to pick up my card. It looked exactly like the old one. It had the exact same details as the old one. It even had the same PIN as the old one. All the hassle was totally worth it.

With just £5 in loose change in my wallet, I activated it there and then and marched to the nearest ATM. I withdrew £30 just because I could. Buttons, boop noises, beautiful £10 notes! Oh, I tell you people, it’s amazing what you take for granted...

I am, of course, being gloriously sarcastic. But it was the most recent event I could think to blog about – perhaps indicative of my social life the past few weeks! But now, with all of us having a bit more free time and the start of Semester 2 imminent, that will hopefully pick up, and I will be able to better entertain you in the future. Thanks for sticking with me this long! See you soon I hope!