We recently had a minor incident with our visa cards - someone who shall remain nameless lost HER purse.  After much searching we decided to do the right thing and cancel our joint visa card.  Ten minutes after doing this, the purse rematerialised.  Joy.

Wev'e been waiting for nearly 2 weeks to get replacements (they are made about 2 minutes walk from where I work) and during that time Telecom tried to charge us.  It failed of course, becuase I don't have the new card number to give them.

Today, we had a call at home from an automated service.  It said to call 128.  Fair enough I guess, their staff must get a lot of abuse so why not have a machine do it. So, I dialled 128 and was given a choice of 5 different options, none of which matched my circumstances, so I picked 'you have been contacted by a collection agency'.  Then I was given another menu with 5 options - I can't remember what that was but I selected something close enough.  Then I had to select whether I was calling from the phone concerned or another phone.  I was calling from work so I selected option 2.  Then I had to enter my home phone number.  Then it wanted the last five digits of my account number - which I didn't have.  Phone home, get the lad to give me the number, repeat.  Got back to where I left off and enter the last 5 digits.  She says "That's Great!".  Yeah right.  But first, I need to enter a pin number.  Arrrrrrrrrgggggggg!!  Or select 0 to speak to a person.  Yay! Finally.

But here's the lovely part, the lady I finally got to speak with did not have my account details in front of her so all that time I wasted entering phone numbers & account numbers was completely pointless.

Grrrrrrr.