1086: Keep on Moving

Moving house this time around has made me realise a few things: firstly, that it’s actually quite a while since I moved from one place of my own to another (my last two moves were from my parents’ place to Chippenham, and prior to that from Southampton to my parents’ place), and secondly, that things have changed quite a bit for the better when it comes to all the annoying things you have to do when you move.

I dread moving house every time it happens. There are many reasons for this. I don’t like packing up boxes. I don’t like carrying heavy boxes. I don’t like discovering that the box I spent ages packing is far too heavy to carry, or that it collapses under the weight of the contents if I do manage to get it off the ground. I don’t like trying to squeeze everything into a van (or, in particularly unpleasant cases, a car) and I really don’t like driving a van.

But those aren’t the only things you have to do when you move. They’re the things that are foremost in the mind, sure, because they’re the hard work, physical labour bit. But once you’re in your new place, you have to deal with a whole new set of inconveniences and frustrations, mostly related to telling various utility and service companies that you are now, in fact, living in a different location.

To their credit, a lot of these companies have implemented online interfaces that allow you to tell them that you’re moving and provide them with your meter readings and whatnot. This helps get around one of the things I used to dread — having to spend hours on the telephone listening to Chris de Burgh hold music and then having to deal with talking to an overly-cheerful person reading from a script and trying to convince you to stay with them. (I’ve moved house, asshole — I am leaving your company out of necessity.) In the case of our gas, electricity, water and phone/broadband providers, I’ve been able to inform them that I’ve moved without having to speak to anyone at all. Efficiency! It’s the way of the 21st century.

For the most part, it’s been great, though Andie and I are a bit miffed at BT because they delayed the installation of our broadband and phone connection without any explanation — we now have to survive until the end of the month using only our neighbour’s Wi-Fi hotspot, which carries a rubbish “fair use” policy that means once we go over a certain number of minutes’ usage (which seemed to be devoured alarmingly quickly) it will unceremoniously and without warning disconnect us every 30 minutes. The irony is that said hotspot is a BT service and part of the package we’re paying for — if they hurried up and installed our proper broadband in our new place we wouldn’t be running afoul of their stupid policies. I sent them a stroppy email today politely pointing out that by the time our broadband and phone is installed, we will have paid for a month of pretty much jack shit. Oh well. Patience is a virtue and all that — though it’s infuriating to have such an unreliable connection (the iPhone and Mac in particular struggle to stay connected) when I’m trying to work from home.

Some companies don’t seem to quite “get” the convenience and security of the Internet, however. Take the bank. I bank with Lloyds. Their online banking service is pretty good — it lets me manage my money, transfer money between accounts and make payments quickly and easily. Payments are transferred within a couple of hours rather than taking several days, and there are other features I could use to budget more effectively if I wanted/needed to.

The one thing you can’t do? Change your address. There’s a link for it, oh yes there is, but clicking it takes you to a page inviting you to print out a form and either take it into a branch or post it to them. The reason I am doing this on the Internet is because I don’t want to do either of those things, jackass. Sigh. I can understand the reason for it, of course — it’s presumably something to do with security and the prevention of identity theft, but given that logging into Lloyds uses two-step authentication it’s already a pretty secure service, and really, do you think that sending a form through the post is actually any more secure than transmitting your information over a secure Internet connection? (Clue: It’s not.)

Oh well. I guess I can’t complain too much, really. At least I have some form of Internet access here, and I can walk to the bank to sort things out if and when I can be bothered. And I’ve successfully avoided having to use the phone for all the other stuff, so that’s pretty good really.

All in all, this move has been a lot less painful than it could have been. Okay, granted, I was absent for a lot of it due to my recent jury service, and Andie sorted a bunch of stuff out for us while I was absent, but getting other stuff done has been relatively painless. And once it’s all done (and our bloody Internet is installed, grumble grumble) we can really start to enjoy this new place.

Then think about moving somewhere new. Hah.