cleanup

[calimac]

It's not spring, but it's time for some cleaning around here. One long-neglected spot was our front patio, which had been building up drifts of old leaves - I understand the local fence lizards like this, and we do get a lot of them - simply because I lacked any efficient way to remove them. I said, this is ridiculous, let us go to OSH, the large hardware store, and see what they have. I came back with a rake - a more usable size than the old one we had, which seems to have disappeared anyway - two brooms of different kinds, and the most essential item of all, the World's Biggest Dustpan, with a carrying capacity of nearly a cubic foot, but still small enough to be lifted when full and have a large plastic garbage bag slide over it. In previous years, I'd tried shoving the leaves into the bag directly; as you can imagine, this worked better. Gaffer Gamgee I'm not.

Somewhat more exciting were the trips to the bank. I wished to order a small press book from overseas and was given a price in Euros, plus the number of a bank account to transfer the money to. Banker started to process the transaction, then stopped herself and revealed that additional items of info about the bank account were needed. I asked if that was everything, was assured it was. Went home, wrote e-mail, got reply saying "I was told they were not needed," but here they were. Returned to bank next day, went through transaction again. Then was told that, since the bank, though not the vendor, was in the UK, the money could only be transferred in pounds sterling (or dollars), not Euros. "You should have told me that yesterday," I said, painting a dismal portrait of the prospect of another exchange of e-mails and a third visit.

I'll give the banker credit. She called tech support and found a way to get a Euros option on the screen. And the transaction went through, I hope: we'll see if I get the book. The fact that this experience made me begin to see myself as Aotrou, and my bank as the Corrigan, might clue you in as to what I was ordering.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

You know, I've ordered two or three things from Forbidden Planet London, and it didn't take a bank visit. They were set up to process an American credit card payment, charging an amount that I saw as dollars but that they were paid as pounds. I had to go to their Web site to fill out the order, and then call them to set up the credit transaction, but seemingly it was a familiar procedure to them.

Looks like it was two orders: Ken MacLeod's The Night Sessions (an interesting theological novel about AI) and the penultimate volume of the hardbound graphic novel series Strangers in Paradise (published in the United States, actually, but every American location was sold out, including the publisher, who pointed me at Forbidden Planet London. I had misremembered Adrian Tschaikovsky's Guns of the Dawn as being another case, but actually I was able to place an order directly through amazon with Kennys Bookshop in Galway. On the other hand, I've never tried to buy anything priced in euros.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

These folks aren't set up to take credit cards. I remember when the Mythopoeic Society first ventured into that realm: it took a lot of setup and went through a lot of baby steps.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Oh that's ridiculous! British banks constantly handle Euros- they can hardly do any other given how many fellow EU states use it as main currency.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I was sure of that, which is why I didn't query the point on the first day. The hitch lay in my own bank's tech setup, which simply didn't display third-party currencies on a given international transaction page. However, there was a tech way to change that setting, and that's what was done.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

If you live in these parts, even outside the Eurozone, it's just part of handbag/pocket change and very much part of everyday.

We never bother changing € back to £ if we have spare as we know they'll get used at some point.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You're talking about a situation where the pound and the Euro are the two currencies being exchanged. But I'm an outsider dealing with a British bank. When I go to Britain, I don't bring along Euros unless I'm also visiting the Eurozone. I don't need them. So I don't think it's totally unreasonable that transactions between a US and a UK bank be denominated in one of the two home currencies; I just think that, in that case, they should have told me on the first day when I asked for a complete list of the hurdles I'd need more info for. The solution involved using third-party currencies regardless of the amount of trade between the second and third parties.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

It would certainly have made your life easier, but since when do banks care about mere customers? :o/