As a newly paid-up member of the mortgage owner club, my thoughts turn to packing my life up in boxes and making sure everyone knows my new address. Naturally, I try to do as much as possible online. There are some great internet start-ups out there to help the moving process such as helpiammoving.com, iammoving.com and helpineedboxes.co.uk to make the build up to that day somewhat easier, but the general ring around still can’t be avoided and it remains a great frustration when my bank will only change the address on my account if I walk into a branch and fill out a form. More so when the branch then won’t talk to the credit card and pension departments and get them to change my address on their books as well. No, I’ve got to send them each a handwritten letter in the post (not v. secure) to make that change. Considering they were one of the first to allow online banking, it would appear that little has progressed since that launch. The assistant in the branch says everything will be updated for me with one form. Experience says otherwise.

My wife in comparison, who banks elsewhere did all of this in about five minutes online. Sigh. And she’s the luddite.

Despite phoning up well in advance of moving, I still won’t have a phone \ net connection for three weeks either. The previous owners let me know that BT were having to send an engineer out to disconnect them. It looks the same guy will appear again to reconnect me again. Which makes me wonder about broadband sans landline. But I’m in the countryside which nixes that particular idea for wireless broadband (although mynow.co.uk look very good for those who can get it btw), satellite broadband would never cover the cost of installing it and the idea of using NT Hell is quickly dismissed. A 3G card though is an interesting idea provided I’m in a 3G reception area and I can stop myself aimlessly browsing researching stuff online for hours. Nope - guess BT can do what they want. Except send me bills online.