I received two letters yesterday.

One was from a charity doubtless appealing to my better nature. I don’t have one. It went in the bin unopened.

The second was from my old bank. There were a load of statements for balance, fees and a couple of other items and all amounts quoted were zero. A note at the bottom said the account was now closed.

Great! I’m now getting somewhere. Three accounts to go.

I tried phoning them. I found a number online [which is buried very deeply on one of their multitudinous sites] and dialled it out. A computer responded and asked me to say what service I required. I replied “close account”. Computer answered “You wish to close an account? Is that correct?” I replied “yes” and it then went into several questions that I had to answer verbally about my identity number and PINs and passwords and the number of the account I wanted to close. I answered all and finally got through to someone with a pulse. He asked a few of the questions that the computer had forgotten to ask and then cheerfully told me I was onto the wrong number. He said he’d transfer me. The line went dead.

Not to be deterred I went through the entire process again just to get back to the bloke who had cut me off. He seemed surprised that I was back so quickly. This time I told him not to transfer me but to give me the number so I could dial it.

Naturally I had a lot more hoops to jump through but I finally got through to a bloke who could actually close the main account. Wooppee! I gave him the account number [which I had already given to several computers]. “Sorry” says he, “I can’t close an account with an outstanding balance”. What the fuck? I told him there was nothing in the account. He replied that it was overdrawn by €10. The evil sleeveen cunts had charged me a service charge again for an account I no longer use.

I transferred ten yoyos just to get rid of them but knew it would take a day for an electronic transfer to travel at the speed of light.

I got two letters today.

Both were from the bank. One was full of pages with zero totals telling me I had successfully closed another account. The other was for Mastercard. I have to pay them €0.00 at the end of the month. So only Mastercard and my main account to go.

I tried logging in this morning on my laptop. It didn’t recognise my credentials. I tried on my mobile phone. That worked. This time I actually found a link to close my main account. I checked the balance – zero [at last]. I went through a lot of typing of IBAN numbers and the like and eventually it seemed happy.

I just got a text message -“Your account closure request has been successfully completed”. Great! At last.

I went into the account on my laptop [which finally decided I was legitimate] and checked the main account.

It’s fucking overdrawn again!

The cunts have charged me €8.92 for closing it.

They can fuck off.