Post Office

So they’ve closed near enough every other Post Office around Bath and expanded this monstrosity. I used to deliberately avoid this one — if I was posting a package to a lucky eBay winner or something — and use one of the small shops that would have a queue of only a few people at lunchtime. After all, I just want to get in, do my thing and get out again. Now that there is this central hub, there’s no avoiding going here if you’ve something urgent to post, which also means that everyone and their mum is there trying to do the same thing. What’s more, you now have to remember to get a bloody ticket and wait an age until your number is read out by a robot over a Tannoy. Hideous.

Before my last holiday I was unusually sensible and took out a Post Office credit card which offered 0% charges on using your card abroad. Perfect! Or so I thought. When I came back to the UK and back to the bill I knew I wanted rid of it as quickly as possible. So I called customer’s services who told me I couldn’t pay over the phone. I registered for online banking to be told I couldn’t pay that way either. So I took my partied out self to my local Post Office on Northgate Street.
This site has the same annoying ticket system as Argos has; ‘Number 112 to cashier number 4 please’. This needlessly complicated system means that you have select your ‘purpose’ at the front of the shop, you’re given a number and then you wait to be called. This meant that some people had number 1, others had number 204. I had number 801. Strangely this meant that I jumped to the front of the queue.
I said to the girl that I wanted to pay my credit card bill. ‘Oh you can’t do that here.’ I explained that I was given my ticket by a man at the front of the shop and told me I could pay my credit card bill here. ‘Oh your credit card bill? Yes that’s fine. Sorry I wasn’t listening.’ Great. After much faffing from both parties, it turned out I couldn’t pay off the balance without my statement which I’d left on my bedside table. Overall — a terrible experience.