Rant-ander

I hope this isn't the last blog I write of 2018 because it would be a sad note to end on, but I've got a rant to get off my chest. SANTANDER you and your logo of a steaming baked potato are a disgrace.

There are some fun bits in this it's not all a complete rant, but here's some context behind what happened. I'm self employed and I usually get paid by cheque, it's not my favourite method of payment but for some reason mosts schools are a bit behind the times with that sort of thing. So I did two big projects this term this mural:

and this mosaic:

Then I went to pay in my cheques. I got the mosaic one first and paid that in.

The next day, I went to do the food shop and my card was declined, luckily I had enough cash. I checked my online banking. the cheque had been paid in and then gone out again which still left me with some money so, this didn't explain why I couldn't use my card. You'd think a bank would tell you before blocking your account a few days before Christmas. Oh wait they did let me know ... BY LETTER 3 DAYS LATER. Good one.

The next day I phoned the school. They didn't know why it didn't work because there was money in their account. So I went into the bank and had to prove this was a work thing by showing an invoice. They said "oh yes this happens. This time of year there's lots of alerts going on things," basically they just thought this was a bit suspicious. But they said they'd sort it and I just had to wait 48 hours and it would all be fine. I gave them the second cheque to pay in and they they'd put an alert to make sure that didn't happen again.

In the mean time as fate would have it, a twitter friend, middle class rapper @mc_hammersmith sent out this tweet: (warning: there are some swears)

It was pretty fun, I do love tweeting companies. It's a much better way to vent than being on hold to their complaints line and I do have a little soft spot for middle class rap. If you've known me since I was 10 then I'm sure you'd remember "Han and Fran", some of the best rappers to come out of the tiny village of Burton Green, Warwickshire in the mid 90's.

The next day I tweeted this and deliberately didn't tag them because I thought it would all be sorted out soon and I'm not a completely nasty twitter troll. 

Now that (spoiler alert) it is still far from sorted, I'm wondering if I should start a twitter campaign where I get different people to tweet Santander with photos of the backs of thing. If there's one thing I like about living in 2018 its that there are creative complaints options. My most creative was this box that I sent to move residential after they made us homeless in 2016.

So when the account was still not unblocked over 48 hours later I was pretty mad and went in again and was there for an hour. I won't bore you with all the details, but they are now saying that both cheques could be fraud and that I have to phone the schools and get them to phone their banks. (Which I can't do till January.) I can't get any money out, not even the original money that was in there and they can't give me any word on how long it might take. At least Mc Hammersmith had my back.

Whenever you tweet they ask you to email, which I did with all the info and I wasn't even offensive, to which they replied we can't really disscuss this over email we'll have to discuss it on the phone. But if you can't sort it out with me in the branch then I don't have much hope of them sorting it by phone.

Merry Christmas.