sort out my finances

transfer complete!

change confirmed by Japanese peeps! At last, the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place!

on online banking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After EIGHT MONTHS of having no idea what was going on with my account, the boffins at Barclays have finally condescended to send me a new card AND a card id scanner thing that actually works!

Good grief!

Now I have only to persist in asking them why there have been no written statements to my home address during that period, and get the Japanese people to change my address details so that I can transfer money before the pound recovers.

is resolved, and I can now use my account, but I still can’t use on-line banking and, naturally, the branch are nowhere to be found!

Have finally got through to my branch manager, who was wonderfully helpful. It turns out:

• barclays branches aren’t allowed to make international phone calls, so they’ve been getting all the faxes from customer services HQ who are somehow unaware of this, but were unable to act on them.

• the new card that went missing in the post was completely unnecessary, and I should have been able to use my current card anyway so the manager was as perplexed as I was as to why a new card had been sent out in the first place.

• the reason there was a caution on my account was that there had been three failed pin attempts on the (unnecessary) card which went missing in the post, and NOT as I had been told, simply because the card had gone missing en route.

We now very much hope things are sorted. Good grief, is all I could find to say in the face of such institutional incompetence.

who explained to me most of what is going on. Apparently the first cretin lady I spoke to put a caution on my entire account rather than just the card which went missing. The nice man didn’t know why she had done that, or why I have been completely unable to get hold of my branch for fourteen days running when they were supposed to be ringing me, but he did tell me I needed to ring the A team finance team after 8 am UK time, and gave what he promised was a direct number with no chance of being side tracked to someone who didn’t know what was going on and was likely to wreak even more havoc on my account.
Ho hum.

still waiting….

to hear back from mum about the mysterious “pin sentry” card reading device and whether it’s arrived. Why oh why is so much of my financial life spent waiting for other people to correct other people’s mistakes?!

letter requesting address change, as instructed by bank manager via mother. Sending it via super post this afternoon.

but somewhat thwarted by Barclays utter incompetence in all departments. A very long story, but due to a data entry “oversight”, I now can’t use my on-line banking, and I can’t do anything about that because the forms I need to do so are only available through online banking. They won’t accept a phone-call _cretins and keep suggesting that I “pop into” my local branch. I asked the nice lady where exactly in Hokkaido their branches are located, and she went a bit quiet and put me through to somebody in India who had no idea what I was talking about.
Have asked my mum to go in for me tomorrow and wreak havoc firmly demand they come up with a solution.