Tricky those Photocopiers

We are currently in the process of buying a house. At present my 1.5 hour commute each way is killing me, so we are moving north - back to the land of my childhood, flat-caps, wellies and middle class ladies in SUVs taking their kids to school. That the life for me!

Lucy is still holding out some hope of being in the house before Christmas, possibly because everyone we speak to in the trade tells us that 'it should be around 4-6 weeks to get you in'. We have no chain, they have no chain.

Of course when you ask around, no-one in the history of mankind has ever actually been in their house within 4-6 weeks. I have no idea where than number has been taken from.

For a start you have to deal with inept banks. This time my frustrations are directed at NatWest who are organising the mortgage. Yes NatWest, I am naming and shaming you for all of your wrongdoings, here on the internet for all to see, on this here blog which very few people actually read! Ha!

Its a ridiculously simple thing which has been holding us up. In order to get our mortgage, I, who am not a NatWest customer need to take in my passport to my local branch and get it photocopied and stamped, with the photocopy sent through to the mortgage arm of the branch.

I took an hour off work to take my passport into the nearest branch (of course most branches only open 09.30 to 16.30 which makes this in itself a pretty difficult task). They did the required copying and sent it through to the mortgage bit. We waited...

...nothing happened. After a few days we were frustrated with the lack of news and called the mortgage centre up to find out what the delay was. They informed us that the passport hadn't been stamped properly. They agreed to make our mortgage an urgent priority. We were annoyed but went back into our local branch on the Saturday morning to get another copy done. Then another wait...

...nothing happened. We chased the bank again and surprise, surprise they said that the passport hasn't been stamped properly. Again they agreed to make the passport an urgent priority and this time they gave us a list of all of the things that the branch had to do in this complicated photocopying tasks.

I had to make a round trip missing a meeting at work to a branch near Bradford, outside which I had to wait for 30 mins with a huge queue for the bank to open. They all open at different times you see, obviously for lack of demand at 9 in the morning. They dont percieve a queue of 10 people outside of the bank being demand it seems. I stood there and made them do the copies properly with the two different stamps. They sent it through...

... Surprise surprise, nothing happened. We called up and they told us the passport copy was smudged so they couldn't accept it. Lucy screamed at them, so they agreed to make our mortgage an urgent priority (again). The guy in the mortgage centre offered to put us through to the branch so we could scream at them instead. Nice of him.

At this stage we had lost around 2 weeks of time and Lucy and I wanted to get this in quick. She had to go home at lunch to pick up my passport whilst we arranged to meet at Huddersfield NatWest - somewhere we should have both been able to make within 40 mins of our workplace - meeting in the middle.

I set off from work at 3.30 (I told your they close at the extremely useful time of 16.30 didn't I?) missing an important meeting and hightailing it to the M62. Just as I passed the last exit on the M606 heading onto M62 westbound, I hit a wall of traffic. The M62 was shut westbound and I couldn't escape. I spent 2 hours in that traffic queue going 1 junction. I have never been so pissed off in my entire life. If there was a camera in that car - it would make some very amusing viewing.

So. I set off to work yesterday to take my passport in before work (another bit of work missed), managed to battle through the snow as far as the inner ring road when - my power steering went in my car. The lord did not want this passport photocopy!

I borrowed Lucy's car and after dropping my car at a garage (£516 the repair is costing me!), we got to the bank and went through the whole rigmarole again. The girl in the branch couldn't really understand why we were so adamant about checking the photocopies - but we made sure she put every stamp on perfectly.

We rang the bank in the late afternoon (it takes 8 hours for the photocopy to get onto the system - didn't I say). It had been rejected again. this time one of the stamps wasn't quite legible. Lucy screamed and screamed. they decided that with the 4 copies of the passport, they would probably be alright actually and actually they would accept it.

Its amazing what a bit of screaming will do.

On Why I am Slightly Evil

In about August 2003, I was supping a pint of over priced lager in Headingley's Trio Bar. With me was one of my best friends from University who had just got a job offer from a major company on a graduate scheme. We were celebrating her success.

With us was a guy from London who was a good friend of my friend, but whom I had always ever so slightly disliked due to excessive niceness and slimyness. When this friend of mine went away to the bar, I had a conversation with this guy that went a little like this:

Sam: "Its really good news about [insert name here]'s new job isn't it?'
Guy: "Yeah, its alright - doesnt pay that well through" (bear in mind that her starting salary was £10k above the starting salary that I had)
Sam: "What do you mean - think it is pretty good?"
Guy: "Yeah well, I have been temping for the last year, but I am looking for a Job that starts at over £40k"
Sam: "What the hell kind of job starts at £40k?"
Guy: " I am going to be an investment banker"
Sam's mind (note that I did not actually say this out loud, but it could probably be read on my face) "Who the hell is going to give you a £40k starting salary when all you have done for the last year is work in a call centre and get pissed at the weekend? And in addition to that you only have some kind of second class degree from an easy arts course in a middle of the road university you plonker? And in addition to that you are quite obviously a bit of a kn*b!"
What Sam actually said: "Oh good luck with that."

Anyway, it turns out he did get that investment banking job! And when I asked someone how on earth he managed it, they told me: "His Dad knew someone".

So there it is. In this age of equality, meritocracy, whatever you want to call it - 'my mind' was stupid enough to believe that people who earn big bucks and big bonuses (and with this carry big responsibilities) were the cream of the crop. They graduate with first class honours in banking from fancy universities, and work hard for 60 hours per week.

This really annoyed me. That this guy who was obviously a bit (but not excessively) dim, and incredibly greedy (and a bit of a kn*b), walked straight into this job with a nod from his high flying father. Also I was wrong (I hate it when I am wrong).

Replace the 'B' with a 'W' and you will know how much love I have held for 'Investment Bankers', for the last 5 years - based almost entirely and completely irattionally on my experience with this guy and similar types I have met.

Fast forward 5 years and the economy begins to crumble partially due to the greed, lack of foresight and lack of transparency of the dealings of some of the big London banking firms. Today we hear that Bradford and Bingley are the latest bank to require bailing out. All I hear about on thye news are reports of staff laid off in investment arms of major players worldwide.

I dont profess to know much about the economy. I definately don't wish financial hardhip on these money shufflers and their families (though I wouldnt mind if a few of them had to go out and get 'proper' jobs doing 'tangible' things).

But a little bit of me deep down (alright not very deep down), hopes that that little pillock gets sacked and has to work in Asda...

I don't mean to moan but...

Sydney is absolutely without  doubt the most spectacularly beautiful city I have ever spent any time in. It harbour views are amazing and it has all of the airs and graces of of a bustling very modern metropolis. I love Sydney so I don't want to annoy any Australians by making out that I dont ... but ...

... there are one or two things about living here in Sydney that are pretty irritating and make me realise that Sydney is the financial capital of a country somewhat separated from the rest of the world by incredibly large distances, and under the surface - it can be a little behind the times. 

Sydney is a city fraught with charges. Charges for everything. My theory is that it must be to do with a lack of competition between companies, and a love of franchising various operations.

Sydney is the only place you can still get charged $1/minute on a same network mobile phone call, it still has download limit on broadband internet connections (meaning I got stung for an internet bill of multiple hundreds of dollars last month). In Sydney there are tolls for many of the roads. Only if you are a tourist they don't tell you that. The first you hear of it is when $20 worth of fines lands in your post box, and you find out that the car hire company has charged you another $50 for handling your toll fine. $50 just for passing on a fine!!

In Sydney the real estate agents rule the roost. They tell you exactly when you can view property and apparently are involved in creating hysteria about housing availability in order to more quickly get rid of properties.

And don't get me started on the banks. When I first came here I decided to set myself up with the same bank (which will remain nameless) as I am with in the UK, being as they call themselves a 'global bank'. I thought I would be able to see my bank accounts side by side on the internet (no such luck).

What I didn't reckon on was that when you have an account over here, you have to pay $5 a month for the honour of letting them take your money. Plus you don't earn interest until you have more than $2,000 in your account. In addition to this you can only take money out of certain cashpoints otherwise you get charged (my bank only has two in the whole of Sydney) and I hate the fact that you get charged for paying in cheques!

And the card you get? Well its fantastic as long as you don't want to buy anything over the Internet (it isn't a maestro or visa), so I have to pay on my UK credit card (because you need to give DNA to obtain an Australian Credit card) then transfer the money over to my UK account (which costs $20 each time) to pay it off.

The account comes with telephone and internet banking, unfortunately when I finally got my PIN number (which is obviously a completely different one to the card machine one, though they have the same name) after around 6 weeks, it didn't work so I had to send off a form (postal only) requesting another one (for the second time). However when I had chatted to the lady who had told me that my PIN didn't exist on the telephone banking service, she encouraged me to enter my PIN a number of times to check if it worked. All well and good until a couple of days later I got another letter saying that all of my telephone banking had been suspended as I had entered my PIN too many times!

So I had to spend two hours of my lunch break last week going into the city to the only branch of my Bank to pay my rent (of course is was chucking it down with rain). Only it costs $20 to make a one off payment when not using internet banking or you can set up a direct debit which costs $5 every time the transaction is made. So I had to withdraw the money in Cash and trapse round Sydney looking for the correct bank (my Landlords bank) in which to make the deposit. and of course then the landlord had no idea where the money had come from because they neglected to put a reference on it and by the way shouldn't my landlord be giving me a direct debit form for this or something and not be making me pay on my credit card all of the time ......ARGHHH!!!