Everything's now sorted (car insurance, breakdown cover, gas, electricity, water, congestion charge, parking permit, council tax, HMRC, banks, building socities, British Telecom, occupants of interplanatery craft, have all been informed of my new address and they have all taken advantage of this knowledge by setting up direct debits to take money from me. Every one of the above pieces of life admin required more the a simple phone call or letter. It required assembling proof of address, proof of identity, copy of gas bill, DNA sample, bone marrow sample etc etc. And each phone call was a "Press 1 if you want to speak to someone about such and such, Press 2 if you want to talk to someone about so and so." And no matter what time you called you were always held in a queue. And a lot of them were in India, which no matter what people say, isn't as easy as talking to someone who has English as their first language and because for some unkown reason my flat number doesn't appear on online registration forms and because of moving flat, living in Amsterdam followed by Shanghai I didn't have ready access to my documents, I was driven to the edge of despair. Here for example is how I spent and hour and a half NOT getting car insurance.
1. Go onto GoCompare website to get quotes
2. Get marvellous quote knocking £80 off of last year’s quote.
3. Want to check my no claims and whether my points are still on my licence.
4. Search for paper licence, can’t find it.
5. Call insurers and ask for those details. They are about to tell me when I get a call from Shanghai, which I have to take.
6. Shanghai rings off as soon as I answer it.
7. Call insurers back . Nice lady helps me and gives me my info.
8. Go to GoCompare to buy my insurance.
9. Can’t remember my security password for my creditcard.
10. Instead of just letting me change the password like it normally does, it freezes my card.
11. Call Egg. Unfreeze my card.
12. Go to GoCompare to buy my insurance.
13. My address does not appear on the drop down menu because it does not exist.
14. Computer won’t allow me to change my address.
15. Call GoCompare. Get man in India who says I should go to the edit screen and change it there.
16. Go back to GoCompare. Find edit screen. It still won’t let me change it.
17. In the meantime my quote has gone UP £25 quid!
18. Call GoCompare. Talk to lady in India whose computer has broken and who suggests I call back in half an hour.
Start crying.
Here's me poking my head out of the window of my new flat.
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| The reason it looks like it's falling down on the right hand side is that it is. |
