Had a rather nice Easter despite my bank
We hadn’t seen my stepdaughter for almost a year so we missed her at Christmas and her birthday had just past. Experience has taught us not to buy her gifts; much safer to let her choose something herself. We decided on a trip to Carmarthen on her last day and all piled into the car.
To be fair Rob and the boys lasted through three or four shops and a lot of umhing and ahing and selecting and rejecting items of clothing, but in the end Rob and Chris disappeared to the mobile phone shop. A few shops later Rach was finally happy with her choice and I went to the till to pay.
Simple? No, the girl behind the counter said something I didn’t understand, I told her I was deaf, she tried again. I went through what it could possibly be ie.:
Do you want a bag? How are you going to pay? That’s a nice choice? – Damn it, what else could it be?
I asked Alex (he does lip speaking quite well) he told me their terminal was down and they would have to take a carbon copy of my card.
‘No probs.’ I said and handed it over. Now I had two people serving me, one was on the phone with the card getting authorization while the other was handwriting the receipt. The other girl hands me the phone – ‘what am I going to do with that; I’m deaf.’ – Confusion: ‘but you have to speak to them to authorize the transaction.’ Needless to say I went to get some cash instead. Problem solved. Rach and I caught up with Rob and the boys in the indoor market and we had a pleasant wander around until I decided to use my cash card again and found it had been stopped!
Unable to call them and ask what the hell they were playing at I had to go to the nearest branch where a member of staff had to call on my behalf and restore the card. She explained to me very patiently that it was for my own good the card had been stopped and I explained even more patiently that they have got on file I am deaf so if the girl in the shop said I couldn’t authorize the transaction on the phone because I was deaf they had a clue that it might be me, secondly the transaction was cancelled and I had gone directly to a cash point to withdraw the money using my pin number – big clue. The bank lady smiled at me with polite disinterest. ‘Well it’s working now.’ She said.