Northern Rock fail again!

It's probably no great surprise to read the title of this post, but still. I'm annoyed. And grumpy. So I'm going to rant.

I called NRK this morning (or technically NRAM as they seem to have split the company into two, renamed bits and generally made it as confusing as possible). i wanted a Certificate of Interest - or a statement - for last year (calendar) so I can do my tax return.

Simples. Or not. Firstly, the frigging automated "Say the first line of your address now", clearly stood no chance with a Jersey address and failed to understand me. It still had a good few goes, just incase, though. Same with the reference number - I'm not sure what the value in having a speech recognition system that can't even recognise the numbers 0-9 is?

After several frustrating minutes, it gave up and put me through to a human - who in his defence, was as helpful as possible. Until one of the security questions was "what is the approximate balance on your account?". I don't know. I don't carry my latest statement around with me - besides.. IM CALLING YOU TO GET A STATEMENT!

Sadly asking a different question isn't an option - so you have to take a guess. And fail the check. Please call back. Nooooooo! That means wrestling the IVR again... argggh!

Lloyds internet banking? Another thumbs up!

For quite a long time, I've been a big fan of Lloyds internet banking - it works well, and always has, really.

It's user friendly and generally not a complete pain in the arse like some others (Alliance & Leicester, Barclays - I'm looking at both of you).

They've added something new - which I'd forgotten about, but thought I'd mention because it's a good idea.

When you add a new person to make a payment to, and automated system calls you on one of your registered contact numbers to confirm that you want to add a new payee and make a transaction - a good security measure, I think. Perhaps not totally convenient if you were out on the move and potentially irritating - but quite well executed in this case. Well done, Lloyds!

Moneybookers scam - Western Union

If you are asked to engage in a transaction via Moneybookers (moneybookers.com) - don't panic immediately - they seem to be legitimate, although I have never used them personally.

However, a friend of mine in Spain was asked to perform an escrow transaction through them, and to transfer money via Western Union.

This rang a couple of alarm bells, so I gave them a ring for him (my english is better, and the only phone number available was a UK line).

They confirmed that they do not work with Western Union in any capacity. I wouldn't normally pass on scam warnings, etc, however, this one was very credible and almost fooled us both - so beware!

If you do encounter anything like this, please forward related correspondence to security@moneybookers.com.

Northern Rock? Failed? Well we knew that..

.. but!

OK, we all know Northern Rock have already failed quite spectacularly, largely due to the BBC's social experimentation (don't get me started), however, our mortgage in the UK is with them - and I called to get a statement of mortgage interest, for my Jersey tax return.

The first one didn't arrive - I blame Royal Mail for this. Fair enough. Used to that.

The second one did. It says:

"I confirm that the gross amount of interest charged to your mortgage loan from 1 Jan 2008 to 31 December 2008."

You'll probably read that once and go 'Yep - fine.' - read it again.

It seems to be missing one piece of information. Yup. The amount!

DOH.

Third time lucky?