sebastienne

Britannia seemed really helpful when I phoned because I needed to renew my savings account with them. They wanted me to post them my deed poll (..sigh) but they were definitely going to be able to change my title, no problem.

So imagine my surprise when

1. They returned the Deed Poll to me, with a letter addressed to "Ms", querying which type of account I wanted to move to and (casually, incidentally) containing the single line "Regarding your change of name unfortunately our Customer development Systems will not allow us to do this."


2. I later discovered that, despite refusing to change my name and also not knowing what kind of account I was opening, they had nonetheless cashed a cheque I had made out to myself as "Mx".

I pulled on my privilege-pants and called them this morning to query the fact that they'd taken my money, despite not having done the thing they'd told me they would, or indeed even having opened the new account. I don't know how strong of a case I have for fraud, given that they cashed a cheque to someone who isn't even in their systems, "Mx" me...

The person I spoke to was businesslike, helpful, and did not question my title had changed. They explained the internal processes with their fixed set of titles to choose from, but suggested that at least my statements could be addressed to 'Mx' (as that's a different system). They also spoke pragmatically of all the points where the big note now on my file saying "please address this person as Mx" could maybe be missed or ignored by good old human error.

They've put a request in the system for me to be sent a statement; if it comes saying "Mx" I'll stick with them for now, but if it comes saying "Ms" I'm gone, gone, gone.