if connected

Stone age 1: The Internet banking software of my main bank has no way for an account holder to delete payees, or to rename them. Having searched the interface in vain for this, I phoned them, and they confirmed the omission. The workaround which they took me through was for them to rename the problem payees with “do not use” as part of the name. Madness.

Number 2: My mortgage bank needed to re-pay me an amount. Rather than reimburse me electronically, they automatically sent me a cheque. This seems especially odd as every payment I make to the mortgage is via Internet banking. So, I trekked into a branch this lunchtime to pay in the cheque, only to be refused: the cheque is to both named mortgage holders, and so it can only be paid into a joint account. We don’t have one. Argh. They still can’t repay the sum electronically for some arcane reason I don’t understand. Instead, we have to write to the bank, jointly, to ask them to re-issue a cheque in just one name.

Apologies for not putting in the names of the banks. I’m not sure about the wisdom of listing such personal details in public to reduce, slightly, the fraud risk.