A hand written letter?!

Closing my French bank account has been a three year long epic so far costing 132euros. I had a meeting with them in Montpellier, took all the money out, signed some stuff. Job done. Mais non. Pas du tout.

After receiving some letters from them months later, I realized I could still log in to my online banking. Merde. Through the online banking internal messaging I contacted them to explain, we had a meeting in August 2018, it should have been closed? Next time I log in to online banking to check the reply, I cannot. Super, presumably they closed it.

Years pass. Depending on how you perceive time, many aeons pass, but certainly whole formative periods of my life pass. Occasionally a random letter about some insurance from the French bank arrives in Charfield, is placed on a pile of other mail about student loans and such, and life moves on.

Finally the letters become “your loan will be sold to the baliffs in a month” and my wiser parents urge me to sort it out and what about my credit rating and so on. I have no information about this bank account any more, moving around means useless paper is thrown away, I don’t know the account number, no cards etc. I ring the bank branch, there is incessant background noise on the line, we struggle through a conversation but everyone on both sides of the phone is confused until they hang up on me. We find out they closed it, but reopened it, as a pending payment for an insurance (with the bank!) that I didn’t even know I had, needed to be paid. It was less than five euros a month..... but many months passed and money subtracted from the account.

Eventually Theo (half French housemate) senses my distress and helps arrange a formal appointment. He has already helped me write letters and emails to them previously. Adil our Moroccan friend explains to me, this letter must be hand written and in a very specific way. I had to pay the money as well. I think I’ve nailed the letter though. Please please let this be the end! TBC.... hopefully not !