Grrrrr.... Again

Dear reader, you will recall, a few weeks ago, how life kicked me in the goolies when a cheque I had been waiting ages for finally arrived, neatly ripped in two by those nice people at the post office.


Well life came back for a second go recently, and in a remarkably similar manner. Perhaps I should get me some kind of protective.


This time it was two cheques, not one, and their combined value equates to about half my annual income. I guess I should have treated them with a bit more care, but because I bank with an entirely online outfit, there's little option but to entrust cheques to the postal system. I prefer, of course, to be paid by electronic transfer of funds, but some of the people I do work for are a little old-fashioned in that respect.


So I filled in a paying in slip, put my account details on the back of each cheque, and took the whole lot to the main post office in Aberystwyth, just to be sure that everything would be OK. This was Easter Saturday, and as I arrived at the post office, a postman was emptying the contents of the letterbox into a big grey sack. So I put the stamped and clearly addressed standard size envelope into the sack and walked away, relieved that I'd actually earned some money for a change.


On Tuesday evening, I posted a cheque to a consultant who'd done some work for me (someone else who needs to be dragged into the twenty-first century). On Thursday that money had been debited against my account, but of the two very large cheques there was no sign. I phoned the bank, only to be told that they couldn't tell me whether they'd received them or not (eh?) and that anyway cheques can take up to seven days to clear. So what about the one I wrote, that they cleared in a day?


Yesterday, eleven days after posting the envelope, I finally managed to persuade someone at my bank to look into the situation. Surprise, surprise they had no record of ever receiving anything. So somehow, between Aberystwyth main post office and an office block in Manchester my envelope has gone missing. A first class, DL size envelope designed specifically to work with their automated systems. Of a kind they handle millions of each day. Useless idiots the lot of them.


I screamed a very rude word when I got the news. It quite upset the dachshund - he's very sensitive you know.


So now I've got to go back to the people who wrote me the cheques, get them stopped and ask them to issue me with new ones. If I'm lucky, that means I'll only be six weeks late in getting paid. I'm going to try very hard to persuade everyone of the merits of electronic funds transfer at the same time. I'm also seriously considering moving my bank account to somewhere that has actual branches so I can, you know, pay money in and stuff.


Grrrr.