Want to hear a funny story?
Too bad…
I applied for a mortgage a few months back. After much to-ing and fro-ing, the mortgage advisor finally got me a verbal approval from the bank. Last week he called me to tell me that they’d changed their minds — due to my work visa. Not that there was anything wrong with the visa — they just couldn’t read it.
He went on to say that he thought they were just being really stupid. He said it printed out fine from his computer and was totally legible when he put it in the fax machine, so clearly this was not his fault.
Yes, fax. Because, obviously, it’s 1987 and that’s the pinnacle of modern technology.
I told him that fax machines don’t generally deal well with greyscale, so the image would just appear as one big solid black box. I told him to forward them my e-mail. He said he'd get it all cleared up and the bank would book the valuation survey on Monday.
I didn’t hear from him on Monday, so I e-mailed him on Tuesday and asked what was going on. He said that after the trouble with the fax, he had taken the print-out of my scan and posted it to the bank.
Posted. Because, who are we kidding… It’s not 1987 — it’s 1957.
The bank had received the printed-out copy of the scan of my visa, and they were fine with it. And so they’d faxed it to their underwriting department.
Oh boy… Here we go again.
Strangely, when Santander’s underwriting department received the fax from Santander’s mortgage approvals department, the funniest thing happened. The visa appeared as one big solid black box. How bizarre! So they have decided they can’t possibly give me a mortgage unless I can prove I really do have a valid work visa and not just a black rectangular bit of paper.
They called the mortgage approvals department, who called the mortgage advisor, who called me. Please could I provide a new scan of my work visa? I did so. In fact, I sent a scan and a photo.
I just heard back from the mortgage advisor. The scan looksed great, he said, so he printed it out and faxed it off to the bank.
Sigh.
I’ve heard that you can sometimes hire monks as freelance scribes to produce hand-written copies of documents. And they can also read them to you. Because this is actually 1357, you see, and that's the pinnacle of modern technology...