I had fun renewing my car tax last year.

This year I had hoped it would be a much more straight forward experience, and so I went to the Post Office armed with all of the required evidence that I was the true owner of a non-lethal vehicle, and if I did happen to prang something, then someone other than me was going to pay for the damage.

The only concern I had was that I had lost my cash card the weekend previously whilst out drinking, and had yet to receive a replacement. This is not a high issue though, as I had a enough cash to last me a few more days and three perfectly usable credit cards.

“Hello, I’d like to renew my Car Tax please!” I said to the nice old man whose window I had approached when called to do so by the hidden window-allocating robot.

He perused the documents I passed under the window, and asked if it was 6 months or 12 that I wanted. I felt it would be a little cruel to say I wanted to limit my visits to this soul-sapping venue of wall-to-wall human misery, so merely said, “12 months please”.

“Sure, do I put my card in here or do you want it under the window” I said pointing at my card and then the chip and PIN machine.

“Oh, we don’t take credit cards for Car Tax”

“Well if you go and get it, I’ll hold on to your documents here and we’ll finish this when you get back?”

So, thirty minutes later, and after a 20 mile round trip, I returned with my cheque book, and do you know what the next thing he asked for was?

My cheque guarantee card.

Fortunately he decided to take a cheque without it, clearly something in my face suggested that would be an acceptable risk for the Post Office to take.

One of these years I am going to have an entirely hassle free car tax renewal. Probably.

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