Good gawd in Govan

I had to contact the Royal Bank today. Never a good idea. I wanted to pay for the bathroom and kitchen that B&Q are about to install in my soon-to-be new flat. If I don't pay for them this week, I'll be bounced out of the queue for fitting, meaning I'll have to be in the flat when the fitters install them. Anything but that. The pressure was on.

I offered my debit card, the manager phoned and we were, of course, referred to the RBS fraud squad to verify my identity. All in favour of that. I was asked 3 security questions and failed the first one: I can never remember if I spell my mother's maiden name with an Mc or a Mac. It didn't matter that I got the next two (much harder) questions right. I had to go on to extra security questions:

Could I describe a recent credit to my account? Yes, I recently transferred in a sum of money. Could I say how much? Yes. Could I give the exact date of the transfer? No.

On to the next question:

Could I remember a direct debit paid from my account? How about East Renfrewshire council tax? Fine. Could I tell the person at the other end of the phone exactly how much this was for and what date it was paid? Er, no. I have direct debits precisely so I don't have to remember these details.

I suggested we could maybe try something else. I seem to remember setting up 5 optional security questions such as the name of my first school, my sister's name, etc. No, that wouldn't do. I was rejected out of hand.

Dear gawd, prevented from spending my own money.

We phoned rbs banking. What to do? The nice young man asked me a whole lot of security questions which I managed fine and then suggested giving it 10 minutes and trying again. He even stayed on the line while we tried. Success. My order is on its way.

Tonight I decided to reset my debit card password, so as to avoid problems in the future. RBS online has a 'chat' section where you can try the  - utterly useless 'frequently asked questions' - or wait to chat with some poor sod in Bangalore. We 'chatted.' That is, we wrote notes. It took me a few tries to persuade Krishna I did not want to reset my pin. At that point, Krishna vanished to be replaced by Tryanbank. (Is that really a name?) because the system had gone down. Poor Krishna is probably in the sick room holding his head right now. And I never used CAPITAL LETTERS once. After only 15 minutes, I managed to change the password.

However, here are my new bathroom and kitchen. Lovely, eh?