Monday 7 March 2011

Money Problems...

I've made an interesting discovery over the last month about how German companies like to receive money.  You'd think that they didn't mind as long as they were being paid and that they would make it as easy as possible for their customers to pay but it's not so.

First of all, we took a Saturday evening walk in the rain a few weeks ago to buy stamps at the machine and send some cards back to England.  The grand total to pay was 3.85 Euros.  I thought I would use this great opportunity to lighten my purse and get rid of some coinage.  No sooner had I started slotting the coins in than a little message popped up - you have reached our fifteen coin limit!  We took all the coins out and started again, this time carefully trying to make sure that the largest coins went in first.  Alas, the message appeared again and, no joke, we had reached the grand total of 3.84 Euros with our fifteen coins.  A much more careful third time turned out to be lucky and we finally got our stamps and headed home to dry off and warm up.

Having made this discovery, I thought it was just the Post Office that was a little odd, but this week I had another little adventure.  Normally when I travel by tram, I don't have to use the machines as I have a monthly ticket that I pay through my wage, however, with Hayley and Si's visit this week I had to use them again.  In buying two day tickets, the total reached a little over 12 Euros.  I didn't have many coins (having used most of them in the stamp machine) so I tried to insert two five Euro notes...but no, this time the tram company has decided that you can only use one note per transaction.  Had I not had a 20 Euro note, I would have been a lot more annoyed by this. 

What is it with German companies and limits on what type of money they accept?!

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