So, I went to the Jobcentre on Wednesday, not in the hope that they’d give me free money (I was 99% sure they wouldn’t), but in the hope that they’d give me a letter that I could show to the bank so I could open a new bank account with Natwest. Jane banks with them, so it’d make sense in the long run to switch to them instead of staying with Barclays. My Gran (who is lovely, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before) had sent me a cheque and as my bank account was closed due to inactivity, I had nowhere to pay it into! So anyway, I went there to start a new claim, and to my astonishment, they basically told me I’d wasted £5 on bus fare to get down there (Waterlooville isn’t exactly a cutting edge frontier, the nearest Jobcentre is half an hour’s bus journey away), as they only do new claims by phone nowadays.
So, I got home, phoned them up – the call took about half an hour – and was told to come back in on Thursday for an appointment. Thing is, I went in there and the woman on the phone had set me up for the wrong type of Jobseeker’s allowance, so I had to fill in a 32 page form. I was basically repeating the process I had done over the phone on Wednesday, but by myself, and with a slightly different form. Modernisation is amazing. So, the bottom line of that is that I will have a letter saying that I am not entitled to any free money (like I was expecting any anyway), but it will be a letter which will hopefully be enough to satisfy Natwest’s proof of identity criteria.
