Oh dear oh dear
Reading through all of this is making me distinctly nervous, you know.

I got married at the beginning of May. We were distinctly skint as a result of organising the wedding, having bought a house together a year and a half earlier, just as the whole credit crunch thing began to bite, which was already full of more crap than we know what to do with, plus becoming quite ill myself only a couple of months after buying said house, resulting in a good six months of struggling by on only his salary.

Accordingly, we decided to just ask for money in lieu of any wedding presents to help get ourselves into a slightly better financial situation and maybe do some of the work on the house that was so badly needed (it was a bit dilapidated when we bought it, compounded by the fact the kitchen ceiling had caved in over Christmas). This all worked rather well and we came out of our wedding reception with a couple of grand's worth of cheques.

Working as an administrator for a financial adviser, I was quite familiar with the fiddly ins and outs of processing a change of name and had debated whether or not it was worth it (we have one client who has been married a good 6 years now, and some of her accounts are still in her maiden name as it has been so difficult getting them changed). I decided to go with it in the end as I would have felt it was an insult to my husband and his family not to (we are all very traditional in that respect), my family is huge and there is no danger of that line dying out, and, quite frankly, I was already fed up with signing Washington at least a dozen times a day (Davis is so much shorter!).

So, I made sure I was prepared by requesting an additional copy of the marriage certificate from the registry office (a shocking number of utility companies will no longed accept a certified copy of these documents so insist on the original, only to lose it the minute it enters their administration centre), and I took this additional marriage certificate and all the cheques with us on honeymoon to Cornwall in order to try and start to get this sorted while we were away.

We popped into the local branch of our bank (Halifax) in St Ives to get the name change registered and pay in our cheques. I should have really expected this, but the branch in St Ives was one of those crappy ones that's not hooked into the central computer system, so they couldn't do the name change, so we paid in all the cheques we could (ones in my maiden name or in his name only) and decided to sort the rest when we got back home. Which I duly did, by popping into our local branch on the day we returned, on my lunch break, with the original mariage certificate and the cheques, so I could pay them in when it was done. The woman at the customer service desk was very helpful, took my marriage certificate and scanned it onto their system, logged the name change and ordered me a new bank card and cheque book. Great stuff. I then went to the normal till so I could pay in the rest of the cheques (the ones in my married name). I wasn't too sure that I'd be able to do it same day, but lo and behold, the cheques were paid inno problem!

Now, two busy weeks later, I realise I haven't received a thing. I log onto my online banking, and the cheques are showing as paid in OK, but I notice it still says my maiden name at the top. I pop back into my local branch on my lunch break again to query this - they log onto the system and can see absolutely no trace of me having come in to change my name, so I go through the whole process again. As we're going through, the woman at the customer service desk (different woman, more senior this time) starts pulling some very odd faces at what's coming up on screen. Now, bear in mind that I have my (joint) current account, mortgage and life insurance for the mortgage all with the Halifax - she can't find me listed on their system at all. The current account is showing, but in my husband's name only.

Eventually, she unravels the catalogue of errors that led to this situation, starting from the first day I walked into the branch to set up my account. This was when we were first looking at getting a house together. For simplicity's sake, we decided to get me added onto his existing current account and get all our money put into that account, on a temporary basis. We'd shopped around for a mortgage and Halifax were the only people who would lend us enough to feasibly buy anything locally (on account of neither of us having gone anywhere near a credit card or hire purchase scheme, we had no credit rating at all - having a £50k deposit from all the saving we'd done apparently counts for nothing). My husband's having banked with Halifax from birth counted in our favour (nothing of the sort from my similar situation with Barclays, but I'll get to that in another response!) so we put all our resources into that account to make it a little easier, until we were sorted and we could divvy the money that remained out again into savings accounts elsewhere. On this occasion, the chap who set this up didn't actually know how to do this on the computer system, so wrote a note on the file requesting this was done at the central administration centre, and added my details onto the file as the first line of the address. Surprise, surprise, this wasn't picked up and wasn't done. Ever. So I wasn't registered as one of the account holders. Despite this, I somehow received a card with my name on, got my work to change my pay to go into that account, and set up all the direct debits for household bills etc (which are in my name, as I knew I would be the one doing all the papework and making any phone calls as necessary) from that account. Oh, and had been paying in cheques in my name (both names, that is). I'd even managed to set up online banking for the account, again in my name only (after months of nagging my husband to let me do so, as it was the only way I'd found I could keep a decent eye on our finances).

This had not been queried in that year and a half, despite me being responsible for the majority of activity on the account, paying cheques in at least monthly, etc. etc. It had clearly been noticed, due to the mammoth workarounds evident that had been done to make the aforementioned list of things that should not have been possible work, but not a single person has bothered to spend the extra few minutes correcting it. The woman this time was fantastic, incredibly apologetic, and spent half an hour correcting all of this in front of me. I had to laugh when we got to the end of it and she said "Oh... it does look like at least your new card was ordered... they just forgot to click "Confirm" at the end of it".

All well and good, I hear you say? Well, this is where you lot making me paranoid comes in - it's two weeks later and I've realised I've not had my new card, and the old one has stopped working. I've asked my husband if he's noticed it come through the post and he says I did have some post from Halifax last week, but it was a load of leaflets trying to sell me stuff and "a new terms and conditions booklet for our current account", so he binned it straight away. I'm pretty certain that my new card was enclosed (from the presence of the terms and conditions booklet) but was in amongst so many leaflets that he couldn't see it. Now, I face a dilemma - clearly, I need to cancel that card and order a new one, in case some unscrupulous sort has fished it out of our rubbish. Normally, I would pop into the branch from work and sort it out in person. However, I've been signed off from work for the week with a suspected case of swine flu (which I don't believe I have, but my work is so hyper-aware of it that my normal hayfever symptoms, high body temperature and fatgue from being worked so bloody hard got me sent home - and of course my doctor won't see me to confirm I'm well enough to work because of this), so am not in town. I don't drive, live a fair way off the bus route, and besides, my old card now no longer works so I can't get the money out to pay for it. Plus if any of my colleagues spotted me in town when signed off sick, I'd probably be sacked. So - phone up and do it? Land line is on the fritz and I can't make outgoing calls. My mobile is pay as you go and my credit would be rinsed before I even got to speak to anyone. The remaining option is to wait for my husband to get home, borrow his phone and do it that way - only I'm now convinced that they will completely stop our account, which still has every penny we have in it, leaving us high and dry until they deign to sort it out, which from reading through could well be months...

So, I've transferred some money across to my emergency Barclays account in case the worst happens. My fun and games with THEM will be detailed in another post. Phew, that was a lot of typing - well done (and my sympathies) if you bothered to read all the way through!

Update: I was right to be nervous - my husband came home last night and informed me his card's stopped working!
( useful_idiot, Mon 20 Jul 2009, 17:19, 9 replies)

I changed my name on all my official stuff
without a problem.

Amazing given that I got married in Prague and my marriage certificate isn't even in English.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Mon 20 Jul 2009, 17:29, closed)

They can..
Put men on the moon, (I know) and map the human genome, but changing your name on a bank account is all inshallah/luck/lap of the gods... gah!
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Mon 20 Jul 2009, 17:51, closed)

Blimey, that is good!
That reinstates my faith a little
( useful_idiot, Tue 21 Jul 2009, 16:28, closed)

Idiot banks.............
I read that and am waiting for the Barclays saga.Hope you get better soon!
(swampi thought of this, Mon 20 Jul 2009, 19:32, closed)

WOW
i think you should get a CLICK not just for the story but due to giving me a reason to not do anyw ork for 5 mins while i read your post :)
(Bermuda_import Beach party this weekend, Mon 20 Jul 2009, 20:30, closed)

Grrrrr
Gets a click from me. I've got a mate who's just had a sex change op (no, seriously, I have), and the amount of hassel she's getting from the banks is off the scale.

Congrats on the wedding n all that.

Click!
( SpankyHanky, Tue 21 Jul 2009, 10:05, closed)

By Mate....
Do you me you?
(Bonzodog29 is an unemployed sponge of the worst kind, Tue 21 Jul 2009, 10:07, closed)

Well,
I keep asking for the hormone replacement therapy so I can grow a nice pair of tits - I'd be happy with that. Hours of entertainment.

But no, it really is a mate of mine. Used to be a miner. Very interesting shemale, I mean, WOMAN... fuck...
( SpankyHanky, Tue 21 Jul 2009, 10:30, closed)

Christ, I dread to think how complicated that must be!
And cheers :)
( useful_idiot, Tue 21 Jul 2009, 16:29, closed)