Green And Paperless... Sometimes I Wonder Why

I run in to work and considering I find running in the morning quite a drag it wasn’t too bad. In fact, I nearly enjoyed it. Well... I suppose I must have enjoyed because I do something really stupid in my lunch hour.

I can’t believe I’ve actually entered two half marathon but I’ve got the confirmation emails to prove it, so I guess I must have done.

Here’s a farcical situation. L has been trying to cash an old endowment policy in. One of those policies that has done practically nothing for the last ten years and is forecasted to continue doing so until maturity. It currently offers a return that would have been bettered by stashing your fivers under the bed.

To cash it in she needs to prove her ID with a bank statement or a utility bill in her own name. This is despite the fact it will be sent in cheque form to the address they’ve been sending statements to for the last decade, so I fail to see the point but anyway... All the utility bills are in my name. I've asked the various companies before if they’ll put them in joint names but they won't. So the utility bill route is out. Then there’s the fact that all our various banks have encouraged us (or forced us) to go green and paperless. So subsequently we don't receive any paper statements through the post for any of our accounts and apparently one printed off the internet won't do.

So we set about trying to get the banks to send us one... which they won’t do unless we pay for a duplicate. How can it be duplicate when we don't receive statements in the first place? Well, naturally me being me, I have no intention of paying. So there follows a game of email tennis between the banks and I, followed by a stand-off on both sides. Eventually I get one bank to back down. However, the Nationwide still won’t budge. A compromise is that I have to opt to revert back to paper statements and then re-sign up for the paperless option after I’ve received one statement. What a charade... and you watch, it’ll end up where a lot of our post does, through the door of the house with the same number as ours in the next street.

Squash goes well and I win my one game. I even manage to keep a lid on my celebrations this time. That’s two for the year now, at this rate I’ll pass last year’s total of nine by the time summer starts and I’m dragged kicking and screaming onto the tennis court.