The old ways are the best

Call me old-fashioned if you will but, when it comes to shopping and services, I prefer the personal touch, I get quite a lot of flak as an outdated dinosaur but recent experience proves I am not such a silly old buffer. I wanted four tickets for the two World Cup rugby games at the Amex. This involved an Internet application. Having applied for USA v Japan I decided to apply for South Africa v Samoa. This defeated me. There was no route to the purchase of tickets. Only when I called was I told that I had to go to the edit application. There were over 4 pages of a guide but nowhere was I informed how to re-apply .

Next up was the purchase of a set of drawers from John Lewis – this was declined. I was referred to a call centre in India and after a laborious process at my cost the purchase was verified. Worse, a hotel resevation I made was cancelled due to problems over my credit card. There were no problems. Apparently there had been fraudulent activity on the John Lewis website and they had alerted Visa. None of this was explained to me until I complained robustly. I gave my manager, a pleasant Geordie woman, quite a broadside. How can it be that a transaction is declined, your card de-activated and other users notified, all without my knowledge?

I have already referred to a medical report that was so securely sent to me that I could not access it. In combating fraud, the banks are upsetting a lot of customers. Next time they can have a personal cheque drawn on my account at Samuel Hoare or lump it.