An Encounter

I got – or am in the process of getting – a new Credit card. It would be to my advantage I was told by the chatty young lady on the other end of the phone, as it would allow delay in payment for up to 28 days, whereas, because I was three days late in my last payment I had had to pay interest on the whole month’s total. It would take, she said, just five minutes for me to answer one or two simple questions. After a long pause the lady from the call centre said her computer was giving her trouble and she would have to call me back. She did, and her questions began, mostly they covered information she already must have had access to, for as I told her (it was one of the questions) I had been a bank customer for fifteen years or so.

She spoke very quickly indeed and although I haven’t got into the hearing aid phase yet, at times it was impossible to get the detail of what she was saying. But I got the gist. She laughed when I said she had clearly done all this before. ‘I know it by heart; but I have to do it’ she said, which of course was true – we were entangled in a web of bureaucracy. It was when she asked me what my gross income was that I began to approach the grumpy old man stage , partly because I didn’t know and partly because the English don’t discuss such things and most of all because ‘gross’ is the last word to describe it. ‘Never mind’, she said, ‘I can work it out from your records’. And she did, totting up the state and work pensions, and telling me what it was, which as I say isn’t much. Probably her income is twice mine and I felt at some disadvantage.

Earlier my new friend had said that I was protected by the Data Protection Act, but I began to feel very unprotected, as question followed question – especially when I stumbled over remembering my wife’s date of birth and had to seek her out to have it confirmed. The exercise emphasised how little privacy there is in modern society. Whilst slightly interested in this new card (‘do you want the black or white version?’), I began to feel not only that I was being sold a new plastic toy but that I had sold myself in the process. In about a month, apparently, the fruit of our phone dialogue will arrive in the form of a document which I have to sign.

But there was a happy ending. I pointed out that my payment cheque had been delayed because at the time I posted it there was a postal strike. ‘Have we waived an interest payment recently?’ I was asked. I was sure that no such waiving had taken place. So I am £8 in pocket but otherwise a little discomforted by the experience.

B.R.