Well, that was a slightly concerning experience.

My credit card was refused earlier this week when trying to make an online purchase. As soon as I thought about this, it was obvious why this might have happened - I bought some hardware a month or two ago and had no recollection of paying a bill since then, so presumably I'd slipped over the deadline. On the other hand, I had no recollection of receiving a bill either, so it wasn't clear what exactly had gone wrong.

This morning I got a letter from the Halifax saying "Despite repeated reminders your account is still overdue" and also "We are grassing on you to the credit reference agencies", which was rather more worrying. So I rang them up and said, essentially, "What reminders?", expecting the usual bull-headed "Well we sent them" / "Well I never received them" sort of argument.

To my pleasant surprise the guy took one look at his screen and said "Gosh, you're right, we didn't actually send the reminders, we'll inform the credit agencies forthwith that it was all our fault and that you paid in full as soon as we actually managed to send you a reminder, sorry for the inconvenience". I do like the Halifax. It's folly to expect any large organisation not to screw up egregiously, but the Halifax at least seem to be able to notice when they've done so, which is always encouraging. So now my card should work again; phew.

In other news, for those who haven't already heard, my company announced yesterday that 1 in 10 employees were going to be made redundant by the end of the year. It will be some weeks before I have any idea exactly who is likely to get it in the neck, so I may be a little tense for a while.

(Rationally speaking it seems likely to me that they'll be gunning for new starters first, because they don't have as much company expertise at their fingertips and because you don't have to give them as much redundancy pay; but nonetheless it's not a particularly cheery thought...)