It’s time to revisit one of my little projects.

On the face of it, it’s a fairly simple project: it is my quest to access the dog’s insurance online.

I may have mentioned this one before as it has been going on for some time. The foundation for this little tale is that I have three insurance policies with Allianz – the car, the house and Penny. They proudly proclaim that I can do all my business with them on the Interwebs. That’s fine. I have an account where I can access my car insurance.

A while back I thought I would add the house and Penny to my Allianz screen, as they have a little piece where they brag that I can manage all my policies on the one screen. Great. Except that it isn’t. It rejects the information every time. I phoned them. I got through to a girl who told me that not only were the policies issued under different names [possibly a spelling mistake or something simple] but that the house insurance was done via an agent, even though it was under my name and address. As far as their computer is concerned, I am three different people all with much the same name and all living in the one house. Fuck!

I’m not that pushed about the house insurance but I really want to access the pet one. I had the brilliant idea of creating a separate login for the pet part. That didn’t work as it said my email was already in use on another account and suggested I just add my pet one to that. Fucking idiots!

One of the advantages of messing with web servers is that I can have a virtually infinite number of email addresses. I created one for Penny. Yes, my dog now has her own email account. I went back to open an online account under Penny’s name. Nope. It wouldn’t do it. It said one of the details was incorrect but it didn’t say which one. I started the process again.

This time it wouldn’t go any further as it said Penny’s email address was already in use. Sweet suffering jayzus! I tried logging in with the password I had entered before. No. Details incorrect but didn’t say which one. The only thing I may have got wrong was the password. They gave a link to reset the password where they would send me/Penny an address to connect. I gave Penny’s address [which I know works, because I had tested it]. No email.

I phoned Allianz and finally got through to a female. I told her my little story. No problem says she. She said she would get IT to correct the details so at least two of me would now have the same name. However she was about to head out on a week’s holiday but assured me it would be fixed on her return. It wasn’t.

So it’s time to phone them again. I just want them to either delete the Penny online account or else fix their fucking email system.

There are times when I wish for the good old days of paper