alexist

FFS!

Yesterday I got my NatWest statement. It indicated that on the 29th of the month, they would be deducting £28 for an unauthorized borrowing charge.

Now, you may remember that this was all because of a bounced direct debit.

This £28 is because NatWest's deduction of a charge put me into overdraft. I called, they refunded the fee, and said that if I was hit with another fee because of this, it would be reversed as well. Simple, right?

So I thought, and when I got the letter I reckoned it was their automated system, and rang them up.

The bitch:

1) Said that the fee refund was merely a "goodwill gesture" and not an acknowledgement of any wrongdoing by the bank;
2) Said that they cannot refund any further fees;
3) Completely ignored supposed note on my account calling for refund of further charge.

Further, she claimed that Sky Digital was solely responsible for taking it out early. My understanding of the Direct Debit guarantee is that the bank is responsible if a direct debit is allowed to go out before its due date (our agreement with Sky specifies "on or after the 7th of each month".) Further, she actually tried to use the "it's a weekend" excuse. Which, by the way, doesn't work because the 5th (when the direct debit was taken) was a Thursday.

Even if I got Sky to admit wrongdoing on the direct debit, this is all due to NatWest's fees. THEIR fee put me into overdraft, hence triggering an unauthorized borrowing fee, which has now triggered ANOTHER one!! Surely, if the original fee was reversed, then I was no longer borrowing money, hence I can't be charged for it!

I gave up and hung up. She was too goddamn rude. I'll try again tomorrow and if that doesn't work I'm writing to the Guardian. It's no longer about £28, it's about being fucked over repeatedly.

Tried phoning my branch.

of course, NatWest won't give out real numbers, so I got passed around a call centre, and finally told I was speaking to someone in Brum who didn't have access to the branch diary but could fax in a request....

(I'm going down there now, at the very least I'll walk out with an appointment)

(ETA: Appointment Monday 10:00. I wonder how people who worked 9-5 could manage this... local branch is only open 9:30-16:30, no weekends. They'd have to take off work to make the appointment, then take off again to go. That's one way of discouraging people from visiting the branch!)

I've not had the best couple of days, have I? Of course, they could have been worse, but I'd rather have done without them, all the same.

Therefore, I have engaged in stress eating. Yesterday when I popped into Dean Street Tesco Metro on my way back to the tube, they had Krispy Kremes. The flesh was weak.

Today, McDonalds fries. I know, I KNOW, they're not even very good chips. Stop looking at me like that. I watched that programme about takeaways with Richard Hammond shortly afterwards too. Made me smug that when I DO deep-fry, I let the liquid cool and pour it back into the jug to throw it out. I never pour it down the drains. (Part of the programme involved Richard going into a London sewer to see the results of all that deep frying.)

Then I felt guilty and had a tangerine. (Might have been a clementine or a mandarin, who knows, it was small and orange and citrusy.) This repeated itself until I'd eaten all 4 (they weren't very big, at least). I wasn't even hungry, I just kept eating.

I haven't scoffed the rest of the chocolates. Nice as they are they're not suitable for this sort of thing.

And why is it that I hoovered the living room 2 hours ago and it looks like it needs it again?! I'm still unsure as to why Neil thought a dark blue carpet was the best option for a room where food is regularly eaten. If it were up to me I'd always go for a hard floor option, possibly with an area rug so the downstairs neighbors don't moan about the noise.

Checking out fares for my sister's wedding.

Virgin comes up with £330 (including £114 in tax) but this doesn't qualify for flying club miles!! I have 30K miles all collected on lowest-fare economy and I want to keep collecting damnit!

(and I'm 1 tier point away from flying club silver)