I have had a surprisingly busy day.
It all started when we were woken at some time in the middle of the night by a text from the bank, telling us that we were terribly, terribly overdrawn, and that if we did not do something about it without delay, then, well, we would be terribly, terribly overdrawn.
Given that when I had looked at the bank account yesterday we had been significantly in credit this surprised me.
Once I had stuffed Mark full of breakfast and packed him up some more for elevenses, dinner and afternoon snack, he went to work and I rang the bank to investigate.
There was a brief and unsatisfactory encounter with an Indian, followed by a hasty transfer to somebody who had a bit more of an idea.
The explanations were hazy, but nevertheless this was what had happened.
A couple of months ago I paid off Mark’s credit card.
The bank took the money out of our account, paid it into the credit card account, and then inexplicably, but undeniably helpfully, put it back into our account as well.
When I looked at the credit card account it was completely paid up.
When I looked at our bank account it looked rather healthier than expected, but I didn’t think much of it, just assumed a miscalculation, and got on with it.
You will not be at all surprised to hear that we spent it.
I wondered aloud to the man at the bank why they might have done this. He suggested that sometimes they do things like that if they have reason to suspect the transaction might not be genuine.
I said that I had no idea that there was a problem with thieves and fraudsters taking money out of people’s bank accounts in order to pay off their own credit cards, and he made some noncommittal noises.
Then we discussed the consequences.
We have got an overdraft facility, and an emergency overdraft facility. If we go into the emergency overdraft facility there is a charge of five pounds a day, so we don’t.
The bank’s activities had led us not just to go into the emergency overdraft, but out of the other side.
The man said that it was not possible simply to take the money back out of the credit card, and that I needed to pay enough money, immediately, to get us back into the emergency overdraft. In addition to this, I would be paying five pounds a day, up to a maximum of thirty five pounds.
I declined this offer completely, since it wasn’t my fault, and we haven’t got any money. In the end, frustrated by my determined penury, the man on the other end of the phone said that he would put me through to a department called Collections.
I was not terribly worried by any of this, since I knew that in a dire emergency I would just withdraw the money out of the credit card at a cash machine and pop round to pay it into the bank.
I preferred not to bother since it was damp and chilly outside.
The lady in Collections wanted to know what arrangements I had put in place to repay it, and I explained that so far I had made none whatsoever, although I supposed I would be perfectly happy to do so over the course of the next week or two.
She said that in that case a payment arrangement would need to be put in place.
I thought that was a good idea, and said that I would arrange to pay it in the next week or two.
She said that it was more complicated than that, and that she needed to ask some questions about my income and expenditure. This surprised me, but banks are peculiar places, so I agreed.
She proceeded to ask all sorts of very odd things, and failed to comprehend the answers.
We started off with ‘how much do you earn?’
She could not grasp that this was not at all something I could define with any kind of accuracy over the next fortnight, so she moved on to ‘what day do you get paid?’
I explained the nature of a taxi driver’s income. She thought about that for a minute, and said: ‘Would you say that it was on Friday, then?’
She went all through the details of everything I am likely to spend over the next few months, and I explained the difference between business expenses and personal expenses, which she simply could not grasp. I wish the Inland Revenue would employ more people like her, they are depressingly sharp on these matters.
In the end she agreed that I probably had enough money to repay them, and said that I could do so in the next fortnight, as I had suggested. Then she said, in an attempt to regain a bankly threatening tone, that in consequence of this I would lose my emergency overdraft facility.
I said that I preferred to keep it.
She said that I couldn’t.
I said that in that case the deal was off. I would not come to an arrangement with the bank. They could, I explained, get stuffed.
She said that I had got to.
I asked what would happen if I didn’t. What would happen, I said, if I hung up now and just paid the money in to the bank in a couple of weeks, when I wanted to. Would I lose my emergency overdraft facility then?
She said that I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t do that, I needed to come to An Arrangement.
I wondered what would happen if I didn’t.
She said that they would write to me in the strongest possible terms, and maybe even send me a text as well.
I assured her that I could live with that.
She went off to talk to her manager.
In the end they decided to extend my overdraft facility for as long as I wanted, which is loads cheaper than the emergency one that I never use. I would not be charged anything and I would have a cheaper overdraft, and they were sorry for the inconvenience.
I agreed that they should be, and nobly promised to put the cash back in once we had earned it.
Mark laughed a lot when he heard the story, and said that effectively we had been given a free loan by the Money Gods. This had been very handy indeed, and we would probably earn some money this weekend. This was perfectly all right.
In the end I am entirely grateful to the Money Gods.
What a nice thing to have happened.
Have a picture of the Lake District taken from work. There are worse ways of not earning any money.
