What are they thinking...?

[crazyscot]

I just received a letter from my old car insurers in the UK. You know, the policy I cancelled in June last year when I emigrated. They refunded me a portion of the premium at the time; fair enough.



Attached to the letter was a cheque for £47.66. Um, guys, you know I'm in NZ; how do you expect me to cash this? Barclays' own website has a gazetteer that knows about a non-trivial number of places in NZ, which helpfully tells me that my nearest branch is some 11464 miles away, in Aberdeen of all places :-). And, of course, BNZ want $$$ to cash a foreign cheque.

Having run the numbers I agree with the original value of their refund and was not expecting any more; by their own terms they said they would charge £47.50 if the policy was cancelled during its term, which they did. WTF is going on? Is there some rash of unfair contract terms cases going on in the UK at the moment?

More seriously, can I ask a favour - would somebody for whom a Barclays branch is convenient be able to pay in this cheque for me?

Comments

[bens_dad]

> Is there some rash of unfair contract terms cases going on in the UK at the moment?

IIRC Which? has been complaining about this, and there has been some other fuss, so I would not be suprised if the answer is "yes".

> More seriously, can I ask a favour - would somebody for whom a Barclays
> branch is convenient be able to pay in this cheque for me?

Would the idea be that you post me the check and I walk into a branch of Barclays and pay it into your NZ account ? Do I need a paying in slip or can I just give them your NZ account number ? Or do you have still have a UK account - in which case can't you just post it to them ?

[watervole]

I'd imagine that he still has an account in the UK. Once it's in there, he can do a bank to bank transfer (or Paypal it to himself).

Most banks don't accept cheques by post these days. (I used to choose my banks on that basis, so I became very aware as they dropped the option)

I can go to Barclays if necessary.

[crazyscot]

Barclays is indeed my UK current account, which is receiving income from my flat being rented out; I tend to pull money over in bulk to try and minimise the fees.

[kaberett]

I can go to Barclays extremely trivially; college address still works for me, though I won't be moving in for another couple of weeks. :-)

[twigletzone]

Happy to go to the bank for you...

[alitalf]

I too would be easily able to do this if the other offers don't work out for some reason.