Legal and financial services

We are often told that legal and financial services are a vital part of the economy of the UK. So I thought I would report on my encounter with some of its practitioners today.

We have some business with financial services company A which prompted them to ask for certified copies of some ID, copies because they do not have an office anywhere near Epsom and I cannot present the originals in person for their inspection. Passport and driving license would be good. Sezzaye: what about an expired passport? No good at all sir. What about a utility bill? Which we can do, but it strikes me as rather odd: I would have thought that from a security point of view an expired passport complete with die stamped photograph was a far better bet than a bill from a utility which we could have dug up from all kinds of places. There was, after all, the chap in TB who once claimed that he had found a copy of his own electricity bill blowing about the seaside at Southend, presumably having fallen out of some lorry providing secure disposal of waste paper services. Rather a long shot, but he was angry enough about it to give the story plausibility.

So off to our solicitor, a High Street operation I shall call company B. No we don't do certified copies. Sezzaye: but I am one of your clients. This is the sort of things that solicitors are supposed to do. Too bad. Why don't you try that nice solicitor down the road? Company C? So I go down the road and can't see them anywhere.

OK, I'll try my bank, company D, with whom I have banked for more than fifty years. Oh no sir. We don't do that sort of thing any more. Sezzaye: what am I supposed to do? Why don't you try the bank next door, company E. I think they still do it.

A nice and helpful lady at company E explains that they do do certified copies, but only for their customers and then only in the case that the entity which wants the certified copies is part of the company E group and the copies can be sent on to them by trustworthy internal mail.

OK, I'll try another solicitor, company F, around the corner. Slightly smaller waiting room than company B, slightly less grand offices. Sezzaye: my solicitor won't do certified copies, will you? The nice and helpful receptionist explains that she won't. If I had been one of their clients, no problem at all. She would have made the copies, given them to me and I could do whatever I wanted with them. None of this company E nonsense about internal mail only.

Getting a bit cross by now, so back to company B to have another go. The receptionist was perfectly pleasant and heard me out. Perhaps she was starting to think her position was a bit weak and after a little poking around she managed to turn me up on her computer and she went off to fetch someone else, possibly one of the solicitors with whom I had dealt in the past. She was nice, tried hard to explain herself, but was not helpful. It was against their rules. More than her life was worth to make an exception - unless of course they were handling the matter in question and getting some proper fees out of it.

But why don't you try company C. Sezzaye: can't find them. Ah well sir, no they don't have a plate up on the High Street, you have to go around the back of restaurant G and go up the back stairs. Which I then do. Much smaller waiting room, much less grand offices. Various people in the waiting room, possibly tenants of our local housing association (the people who picked up after they more or less abolished council housing).

Within seconds I am carried into a back office by an older solicitor who was happy to make my copies and decorate them with impressive stamps and so forth. Happy to have a pop at the various companies mentioned above. You surely didn't think they got where they are today by providing a service to their customers? And anyway, they are completely obsessed about the risk of getting involved in some theft or fraud. A very reasonable number of pounds changes hands and I leave a happy man.

With another result being that any possible risk has been transferred from the relatively rich company B to the relatively poor company C.

Let's hope that company A are going to be satisfied.

PS: I also asked company B about getting at our wills. Oh no sir. We can't do that unless you can provide some proper id. But at least, in this case, I can carry the necessary originals from our house to their office in the High Street.