Occasional Scribbles

I haven’t had a very good couple of days.  I was talking to my elder Teen on MSN as he is miles away in New Zealand and after quite a long time, it became clear that he had spent his wages for the week, his car got a  puncture, he was down to his last $6 and had run out of food.

To be fair to him, he did not actually call me for help or to even tell me of his troubles but as I am Mum, I can detect when all is not well even when thousands of miles away and I wheedled out the details.  Being a Teen and living in a house share for the first time, he has not yet learned to budget properly, though it could be genetic, since I have never learned this fine art either.

I considered my options.  I could send him a cheque but that would take over a week to get there and would then take another week at least to clear the funds.  Really, not very useful at all when you are down to $6 dollars and there is no food in the cupboard.  My next idea was to ‘wire’ him some money.  I’ve seen this done in films and it always looks incredibly easy.  I open up my online account to find that you can’t ‘wire’ money to a foreign bank online, apparently.  I trot off to the bank, armed with the Teen’s bank details.  And here is where we hit one of several annoying problems.

Firstly, and contrary to my expections – still feeling like someone out of one of those films I mentioned, I find that there is a humongous form to be filled out which I am unable to do, since I do not have a couple of bits of information.  The couple of bits of information are numbers which the Teen has to get from his bank.  They are secret bank numbers and cannot be found on a bank statement.  I am getting very anxious at this point.  Part of the problem is that when it is day time here, it is night time there and there is a small window of opportunity when the Teen can call his bank and then me with the information.  Worse, the cost of this little bright idea to ‘wire’ some money will be approximately £40.  Well I think so.  It will cost me £20 and a similar fee debited from my Teen’s account which is empty anyway, though I do have the ‘option’ to ‘pay all fees myself’ by ticking the appropriate box on the form.  It is such an exhorbitant amount for what, in films is a real easy thing to do, that I am outraged.  I was only going to send £100 which is in fact quite a lot for me as I have a weeny income and to think, that on top of that we will have to almost half again in fees. It’s pretty hefty and out of proportion to the amount being sent. It is of course a ‘standard fixed fee’.

I walk out of the bank in disgust and reluctantly resolve to send him the cash in an envelope, though this will take ages to get there and might be pinched in the post, when I suddenly have another idea.  I remember that the Teen has an account at my bank which he was going to shut down when he went away but at the last minute we decided to keep it going.  Could he somehow access the money in New Zealand if I put it in his account here in England?  I go back into the bank, relieved that I didn’t have a tantrum earlier and mention this idea.  There is a really lovely guy in the bank who always takes the time to chat to me and  who knows my Teen.  He even waves to me when he cycles into the countryside near my house.  I get him on the case.  I mention that the Teen didn’t think he could use his account in NZ since our bank doesn’t have branches out there, where he is staying.  He tells me that the bank, have an ‘arrangement’ with other banks who allow customers of other banks to use their cash mashines.  Bingo!  Only I remember that we cut up The Teen’s card when we thought we were going to close the account.  ‘No problem’ says Barry.  ‘You can order another one to be sent out to him’.  Phew!

Sadly that was famous last words.  I ordered another card for him but they insisted that they could only send it to our home address and not to NZ.  I explained that The Teen was not living here, he was in New Zealand, but you might as well talk to the dog for all the difference it made.  Like a dog with a bone, the ‘voice’ repeated for the umpteenth time, that the card ‘must be sent to the address it is registered to’.  Furthermore, The Teen needed to download and print off a form, (he has no printer) and send it (going to take ages, I am thinking with frustration) that tells the bank he will be using his card abroad, incase they think a thief is using it unlawfully. By this time I am in tears.  I think of my poor Teen out in a strange country, out of food, out of love (his girlfriend dumped him), out of everything.

I call Barry, the lovely guy at the bank.  Bless his heart!  Hearing my strangled voice, close to tears, telling him my Teen is starving and out of money, he calms me down and tells me he can sort it all out IMMEDIATELY over the phone.  All my Teen has to do is call a number later, to tell them, on the phone, (no forms) that he is in New Zealand and he will be able to use the card.  All done and dusted.  You have no idea the people I had to speak to, the machines I had to speak to and all the forms and numbers I was supposed to fill in (fraudulently of course, since I am not my Teen) that I have had to put up with today and yesterday.  Fingers crossed, his card arrives and he can actually use it and all will be well.

Reflecting on this sorry state of affairs I couldn’t help thinking that it is damn funny in this day and age where technology is so advanced, that the banks are so woefully far behind.  My cynical self tells me that they are not in fact behind at all. They just pretend to be.  We all know that with a couple of clicks of a mouse, funds can be transferred to anywhere.  Why the huge fees?  We all know that there are gremlins inside the banks’ computers that fire off automatic letters if one goes just a teensy bit overdrawn and last time I checked, they weren’t sending out bank employees to deliver anything on foot.  So why the huge fees.  What does it really cost for those bean counter gremlins to AUTOMATICALLY, without human intervention, send a letter out/send funds? Not surely the princely fee of £30/£40.  And why is it, that since they really do only have to press a couple of buttons, I have to fill out a contract size form, to send my Teen some money.  I would have thought, that equipped with the name of the bank, the name of the account holder, the account number and the sort code, I should have been able to ‘wire’ my Teen some money without any further ado.

Hope he appreciates it.