It's all gone horribly wrong

Looking on the bright side, maybe I'm getting all my shit luck out of the way before I go travelling, which would be a good thing. But what a genuinely rubbish run I am having. We've got the whole credit card fraud thing, as detailed below. Actually, let's start with a list of organisations that are currently on my shit list and then I will explain - this way, the time-poor can just know who to hate on my behalf and not have to worry themselves with the why of it all.

Current list of evil fuckers (LEF):
Barclaycard
ebuyer
Home Delivery Network
David Daniels
Home Office - in particular the Managed Migration department
Decathlon

So Barclaycard, we know about. Utterly incompetent and unhelpful when you've been defrauded. Tell you what, they do get that replacement card out to you in a hurry so you can keep on racking up the debts though! At this point, I am still unable to challenge the fraudulent transactions because they have not yet supplied me with a statement in the time it takes them to cancel and replace my credit card.

ebuyer. This is the company through which I have been ripped off. So far, so not necessarily their fault. However, I phoned them earlier this week to see if I could prevent any possible outstanding goods being despatched on the account in a bid to minimise the damage. I gave them my postcode, my address and when they asked me for the account name I explained that apparently the person had been using the name Andrew Breck but my credit card and address. They then refused to tell me whether any goods had been sent! Despite the fact that I had given them my address and was willing to give them my credit card number as confirmation. They would tell me, however, that their courier company is City Link.

City Link are not currently on the LEF because I think they might end up carrying the can for all of this. I phoned them and they claim that someone at the house signed for the goods on February 16 - a day when both Grrr and I were at work. I can only assume that the person waited outside the house and signed for the goods when the delivery came. There is no way the guy was actually in the house and they clearly didn't ask for proof of identity or address, so I think they've cocked up really. They could join the list, however, with just one tiny step in the wrong direction.

The so-called 'delivery' company that does make the LEF is the ironically entitled Home Delivery Network. Tragically, the formerly unfaultable Amazon is now using this hutch of braindead bunnies to deliver your goodies. The nearest depot to us is about 6 miles away. After we received the first card, with no tracking number written on it (and a website that won't give you any information without a tracking number and crashes when you try to get contact info) I contacted the depot direct.

[Small up-beat aside - thank you internet. I googled 'Home Delivery Network die you bastards', or somesuch, and found a message board where others were discussing the extent of this company's evil. One extremely helpful person had posted some advice on contacting the scum - don't call their crappy central call centre number, go to 192, do a search on the company, find the depot nearest you and call direct. I did this and it worked a treat. I also got to read some really nasty things about the Home Delivery Network, which gave me a little warm glow.]

Phoned them, they're open until 7pm Mon-Fri. Cycle out there after work in the cold and dark. 6.45pm: find warehouse in middle of nowhere, observe many signs telling me to go to front door, ring bell, buzz intercom, bash on door, tap on window, no response. Swear muchly, cycle back home.

Phoned them again to check what hours they are open on Saturday so that I can cycle out there. Again. Me: 'So, is there anything special I have to do to get in? It's just that I was told you were open until 7pm in the evening but I was there at 6.45pm last night and there was no one around.' HDN twat: 'Yes there was. You should have gone around the back.' What do you even say to a response like that? I'm the customer. All the signs at your warehouse tell me that I must go to the front door. It's dark, in a deserted industrial estate and you want me to go wandering around on the off chance that someone might be hiding at the back of the building. When eventually I was able to collect my parcel, having gone 'around the back', I discovered that they were working inches from the front door on which I had been banging and ringing and tapping and so on both the night before and that very morning. Evil. Mother. Fuckers.

Our washing machine is broken. It has been broken for more than a week. It is half full of filthy stinking stagnant water. It was supposed to be replaced with a new machine yesterday. It wasn't. David Daniels are the estate agents that work for our landlord. They are the rudest, most incompetent, ignorant and cretinous estate agents ever - which, as you can imagine, is up against some pretty tough competition. Just thinking about them makes my ears bleed.

My application for citizenship has been approved. Hundreds of pounds and a naturalisation ceremony later I receive the certificate I need to prove I am now both Australian and British and thus secure a British passport. It's wrong. They've got my name wrong. They've decided that my name at birth was different from my name now. I have posted it back with the required evidence of who I am, and now I discover that it will take at least two months for them to check the application and print a new certificate. That's more than twice as long as it took them to approve my application. All those reports about the incompetence of the Home Office, they're all true.

Decathlon I feel a bit sorry for. If so many other really irritating things hadn't happened, they probably wouldn't have made the list but I've run out of charity and general benefit-of-the-doubtness. I bought, among other things, some new cycle shorts from the Decathlon store at Surrey Quays. I cycled all the way home with them and then, when I went to wear them, I discovered that they still had the security tag on. Because they only made them in grey, not the black which I actually wanted, I can't even just rip it off because they will end up with an unsightly stain. Now, I will have to cycle all the way back to the shop to get them to take the security tag off. I know, it's not a big thing, but it's another thing and therefore, albeit harshly, they make the list.

My next post will be a fluffly bunny filled ray of sunshine - probably focusing on cool stuff that I have recently bought. I hope.