As part of the fallout from my parents’ house move, and because of my extreme laziness over the years, I need to register a change of address with one or two organizations. Yeah, even though I’ve lived in Cambridge for ten years a few places still have my parents’ address.
Today I thought I’d sort out Britannic (I’ve got some investments with them). I soon found that they have one of the worst web sites I’ve seen in a while, which fails to work properly in Firefox. (And try the “printer friendly” page while one of the stupid scrolly things is stupidly scrolling: it still scrolls stupidly.) “Our asset is our team” they say. Well, it’s certainly not their web site. Change of address? No help here (I refuse to run IE just for this).
I dug through the most recent paperwork and found a phone number for their “helpline”. It rang long enough for me to start thinking I’d got the wrong number before they finally answered. Hello, yes, I’d like to change my address please.
“Oh, no, you can’t do that on the phone. You have to tell us in writing.”
I’m contemplating buying a big scratchy fountain pen and writing in my best flowery 1950s language. “I should be obliged…henceforth…I remain, sir, your obedient servant”.
Avaragado's blog 
Legal
It is because anybody could just call up and change the address (like bad guys) and the company would have no proof.
But if there is a letter, they can show why they changed the address. Also bad guys are apparently illiterate.
Re: Legal
Yeah, I know why they’re doing it. But other companies have systems that authenticate you without making you write a letter. (And letters can be intercepted too, of course, via a postman-in-the-middle attack.)
Legal
It is because anybody could just call up and change the address (like bad guys) and the company would have no proof.
But if there is a letter, they can show why they changed the address. Also bad guys are apparently illiterate.
Legal
It is because anybody could just call up and change the address (like bad guys) and the company would have no proof.
But if there is a letter, they can show why they changed the address. Also bad guys are apparently illiterate.
Re: Legal
Good old livejournal. They accept the posting and then do a connection reset which upset my proxy server. Insert weak joke about things in triplicate.