What a day.......

Doorbell rings & its the postman with a recorded delivery letter! Whoop I think- wrong I was!! Its from my lovely car insurance people telling me 'Thank you for advising us to renew your policy; we have tried to take payment but been unable to, therefore your policy is cancelled'!

I would like to state that I did not ask for my policy to be renewed (I had overlooked this important date on the HUGE family calendar hanging on the wall) so how, therefore, could they have had my authorisation to take money from my (rather depleted because of only currently being paid Maternity Allowance) bank account!

So I ring the lovely insurance company (who offer no reason or even apology for not actually reminding me) & ask them what my renewal premium is.....& after I pick myself up off the floor because for reasons they are unable to quantify (no details have changed, no accidents or claims made) it has doubled, so I tell them to shove it!! Only problem is I now have no insurance..

So on line I go, trawling through some of the comparison websites as well as a few direct companies & finally get a quote for what I consider to be a reasonable amount.

After contacting the company by phone so as to speak to a real person & not just hand over a large sum of money to the computer screen I work my way through the usual questions; have you had an accident? Have you or your spouse had to make a car accident compensation claim? Had any motoring, or other, convictions? Etc. etc. I finally get to the point where payment is taken, reference numbers given & instructions written in detail as to what to do when new policy documents arrive.

Lovely I think – job done! NOT!!

An hour or so later I go to the cash machine to discover I cannot withdraw any cash; strange I think so on line again I go to check my bank balance.

I then ring the bank to confirm what I can see on the screen – I have money! Discussing with the lovely bank lady that I have made a payment to an insurance company for x amount she then says hang on a minute- you have three pending payments for x amount – THREE!! Eh?

After much to-ing & fro-ing between bank & insurance company it would appear that the fault lies with the authorisation centre, who are the go-between people between the insurance company & the bank – the exact same people who are there to ensure such mistakes are not made!!

After gathering all the necessary information of 'system reference numbers' & 'exact transaction times' I am now left waiting to see whether the insurance company can liaise with the authorisation centre to 'manually reverse' two out of three of the transactions.

All the time that the transactions are 'pending' on my account the money is earmarked for said transactions & I am therefore unable to access my money – pants pants pants!!!!!