So the £500 was mysteriously ‘found’.  I logged in to all of my accounts to see if it could have been paid into one of my other accounts (I didn’t see how it could have been as I paid in using my chip and pin card so it could only be associated with that one account!)  It wasn’t there.  I phoned Natwest and was told “Nah.  We have no record of that” and then he more or less hung up on me, as if I was just supposed to say “Oh well, no worries!”

So I went to the branch where I had paid it in and the lady recognised me.  After two members of staff looked at my accounts and also verified that it was not there, they promised to look into it and get back to me.  I told them I was off to the other branch to see my business manager to see if I could speed up the process as our office rent was due.

Business manager was not too thrilled to see me.  He said “hmm…. Let me take a copy of your receipt and see if we can resolve it.  I really don’t understand why you haven’t just gone to the branch you actually paid it in at”.  “I have.  I was there for an hour and they couldn’t do anything”.  By this point I felt like throwing him out the window.  He came back a minute later and said “Found it.  You paid it in to your savings account” (as if to say “you stupid plank”).  “Er….  One of the reasons I am dealing with you, is because a savings account was never opened for me under this particular iteration of “Pink Sky”, even though it should have been!!!  He visibly bristled.

He logged in to my new Pink Sky account (different card, different login etc so no way it could have gone there by mistake) and showed me £500 that had “gone in” two days previously.  “SEE?” he said.  “Not really” I replied.  “Not only did I check that account, but so did your other branch and it wasn’t there 5 minutes ago.  Not to mention the ludicrous fact that IT SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE IN THERE!!!!”

He turned to me with a smarmy smile and said “Hey look on the bright side.  You’ve probably earned 1p of interest whilst it has been there!”  I nearly exploded.  “Yeah, because that really makes up for the 2 HOURS OF WORK THAT I HAVE MISSED talking to you” I said.  At which point he attempted some vague level of professionalism.

I asked him why he’d claimed to have emailed me about the wrong cheque books and paying in books and debit cards.  He said that he had, of course, but I do not have those emails.  He just said “Over the next few days you are going to be bombarded with paper”.  Oh fantastic, just what I was after, following such a catastophic portfolio of errors!!  It was as if he was expecting me to thank him for it!!!  Funnily enough, I have not been bomarded, in fact I have not even received a fluttering of paper.  Not a sausage.  And our postman has been delivering.  So, I await tomorrow’s phonecall (to arrange a get together) and am not sure quite how long I can be ‘Christian’ for!!!  It is definitely a challenge of grace and patience. I don’t know how Jesus does it!