Only.
Our COA was sent back as ‘your payment details were wrong / card declined / some other card related payment problem’ . The problem is they don’t send back the payment page.
My credit card has a whacking great limit on it (not for the sake of pride I say this, but because banks are foolish and upped my credit limit every time I neared the limit on the card for a long time). So despite my urge to ring them and hurl abuse at them for being idiots, I rang and politely asked if I could find out what happened because otherwise we’re just sending back exactly the same information again.
Their response is brilliantly useless.Â
“We don’t send back payment details for security reasons” – okay, that makes a vague degree of sense. Although you’ve just told me they’re either wrong or the card’s being declined. If I’d stolen the card, surely I’d know the number off the stolen card already. And wouldn’t using a fraudlent card be spectacularly dumb when contacting the Home Office? Anyhow.
“We can’t tell you what went wrong.” – Uh, ookay. So I can’t find out what the problem was, so I can’t actually rectify it. All we can do is do it *again* and see if the same thing happens.
There is, apparently, no way to compare the number on my card to the number that they read off the form. No way to find out whether they match. No way to find out if it was declined or if the card number was wrong (and as a side point what’s the point in us giving them a contact phone number if they don’t fucking *ring* it).
So, we now have to fill in the same fracking form (no, we can’t send back the old one with a new payment page) and send it back to them. For 300 quid you’d expect some degree of service. But no. And at 50 quid a page, it’s not cheap (several of those pages consist of ticks).
I’m sure Canada’s beaurocracy is just as dumb as ours, but I’m fucking glad I’m planning to leave this country.
