Erieversible

Today I paid the invoice for shipping the personal affects we are keeping.  They are now officially on their way to Erie.  Okay, they are still in the warehouse and will be for a week or two but the process is rolling.  Definitely no going back for those items now.  It turns out that transatlantic shipping isn’t too expensive - compared to the marine insurance.  Of the total bill one third of the cost was the insurance, which is optional, but when you are shipping all the stuff that turns a house into a home it would be terrible to lose it all with no recompense.

Not much further progress at the Isle of Man end today as it was a TT race day and the roads were closed for much of the day, restricting travel somewhat.  An early run to the tip cleared out more rubbish from the house, and arrangements have been made to sell the second car.  Even though it was only small progress today, I’m now one day closer to being able to travel to Erie.

Meanwhile the credit card company is quite happy with me living anywhere in the world, as long as the address on the account is a UK address.  That isn’t an option, so our main UK credit card will have to close.  And that’s another nuisance - why doesn’t credit history, or credit rating, work on a global basis?  I currently work for a bank (RBS) that likes to remind everybody all the time that it is a “global” bank, yet moving within that global environment is full of disconnections as far as the financial world is concerned.  In the UK we call that ’spin’.

The great news is that the credit card company has refunded the costs of the plane tickets for the airline (Euromanx) which went bust.  In the end it was just a case of going through their process, step by step.  Tedious, but worth it.

The bad news is that the account now has a credit balance.  Why is this bad?  Because credit balances give the credit card company so much grief that they penalise you if you have a credit balance at statement time.  Of course, I could argue that the credit balance is due to this refund, but do I really want to go back into the mire that is their due process?  No, I don’t.  So, I’ve got about 10 days before the next statement date to do some shopping.

In the efforts to claim back from the credit card company the cost of the flights on the failed airline Euromanx, finally we get the paperwork.  Dated 12th May.  Giving us 14 days to return the necessary paperwork or they will consider the claim closed.  Very good of them to not post their letter until the 18th, meaning that 7 of the 14 days have passed before we even get to see the list of demands.

Luckily some checking around had prepared us for this approach and a long evening’s work was all that was necessary to turn the paperwork around.  The accompanying letter makes clear how much we liked the 14 day period starting with a 6 day delay on their part.  It also very clearly laid out the basis of the claim under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974.

With everything else going on the last thing we need is for the credit card company to be pulling cheap tricks to avoid paying out.  I wonder what their next trick will be?