Golly

I'd not realised it'd been a month since my last update. I hope you're not all too stressed out from the lack of news.

I've spent the morning on the phone to various UK companies, finally giving them the details of my move. Thanks to a somewhat disorganised approach to my personal finances, there's quite a few companies to inform - for example, I currently have three current accounts with two different banks; I should really have organised myself a little better there, I think.

It was interesting to see the different approaches from the banks. I called my Halifax credit card first (mainly because they were at the top of the pile); and it went through with no problems at all. They even said that they'd send the information on to the bank, so I wouldn't have to call up again and tell them all the details again. That was surprsingly joined up of them.

Santander, on the other hand, couldn't take the details of an international move over the phone (she asked, several times, if I was sure I had the postcode right, and wasn't listening when I told her that it was - their system is designed for UK postcodes, and has a handy address lookup that fails completely when you give it a non-UK postcode.) She suggested I fax them details of my address - seriously, who uses faxes these days? - and in the end, relented and said I could write to them.

I guess there's a reason why Santader always used to come out bottom on customer satisfaction surveys.