Life in the Fast Lane

Is it just me or are we used to wanting everything yesterday now. Fast food, microwave meals,
I order from Screwfix it arrives the next day, form Ebay within a couple of days, same with Amazon, Misco etc. etc. I open a share dealing account online put in my debit card details, transfer some money and away you go within minutes I can trade up to £10,000, scary but true. So when it comes to dealing with this next lot of Herbert's, it really made my blood boil.!!

I have to say right from the start that I have dealt with the commercial arm of Moneycorp for years now, they have transferred tens of thousands of pounds and euros to and from Spain for us with no problem at all ever. You speak to the highly intelligent and articulate dealers and they do exactly what they say they will do when they say they will, I can move thousand to and from Spain on a verbal contract, great. So when I see on their home page that they were doing a prepaid currency card I thought great for the coming touring holiday in France, not having thousands in cash on you and a better exchange rate than using credit cards. So as I was talking to one of the dealers I enquired whether as I had an account with them already it would be just a matter of requesting one. He didn't know but said he would find out and e-mail me.
Minutes later the e-mail arrived, I had to apply online from scratch as it was a different division from the commercial arm. Fair enough, funny though the weight of one word in a sentence, "different". "Different" like Rolls Royce and Lada as I was about to find out.

So I applied online, it then let me get into the account management pages, I could register the debit card I would use to top up the cash card, so I did, then as the euro was looking pretty good then, I tried to transfer some money to my new E-Account. No chance, got some generic massage telling me to ring the help desk. As this was about 11:00pm i waited until the next day, tried again got the same error message. So steeling my ragged nerves I rang the help desk. ( Help - desk what a fecking misleading term.) Eventually going through all the automated messages I got to the option they never want you to use, speaking to a Human Being, well a rough approximation anyway. Telephone conversation, mmm, doesn't a conversation kind of imply that the people involved, usually two, actually adapt what they say depending on what they have just heard, or doesn't it just kind of end up like an automated message.

It reminded me of a time I had the misfortune to have to fix some IT gear on a military base at Catterick. Wasn't sure which base this particular regiment were on so pulled up at the first gate I came to and no matter what I said, all the guard on the gate would reply was , "Please report to the gate house. sir"
Yeh, but is this the right place for the 95 regiment.? "Please report to the gate house. sir",
Is that the building over there.? "Please report to the gate house. sir",
Am I allowed to park here? "Please report to the gate house. sir".
Once in the gate house all became apparent. It is all they are allowed to say, with the possible exception of "stop or i will shoot you". So, back to Moneycorp,

Some cretinous automaton on the other end advised me to delete the card details, wait 24 hours then re enter them and try again. So I did.
24 hours later, I tried again, same error message. Rang Helpless Desk, another automaton, with a speaker phone so useless it cut off the start and end of everything we said. Delete your card details and wait 48 hours and try again, I eventually managed to glean it was saying. So I did.
48 hours later, I tried again, same error message. Rang fecking useless totally helpless desk, a slightly more intelligent automaton, obviously with some sort of upgrade from the other two, said, Oh no you have to wait until you receive the cash card in the post, before you can top it up.
Right, ok, fine, I guess that makes sense, but why couldn't the other two amoeba brains tell me that. Oh, and you'll need to delete your debit card details and re input them as well.

So after about ten days the bloody card arrived in the post, so I activated it over the phone. Went online, re-input my debit card details, tried to top up the card, and got an error message saying I had to wait three days from inputting my debit card details to being allowed to use it to top up the card. ( Remember the share dealing setup , 10 grand in 10 minutes!! ) How my fist didn't actually go through the monitor I'm not sure. So in the meantime the euros falling and as far as i'm concerned these bastards owe me the 100 euros less i'm going to get by having to wait even longer.

SO if you re thinking of getting one of these cards do it from somewhere you can walk into and get it on the day like the post office or Thomas Cooks.

Fecking Kents.