Saturday, October 4, 2014

Investigate before you decide.

It is always nice when something exciting happens in the family. I found out that a Dutch writer wrote a book about the family background of my first husband. He passed away more than 30 years ago but I stay in close touch with the family. Of course I want to have a copy of this book. The only setback is that it is written in Dutch and my children do not read any Dutch. I asked the author permission to translate some parts of the book that would be of interest to my children. He gave me that permission freely.
It is a very expensive book and I want to pay my brother-in-law the cost of the book. No problem. I go to the bank and get a banknote for the amount of the book in Euros. About a week later my brother-in-law phones and tells me that it will cost him 25 Euros to cash the banknote of 52 Euros. He did not feel right to do this and was suggesting a different way of doing this. His son his coming to Canada this Christmas and visit my youngest son in B.C. He will bring the book and I will work things out with my son. Sounds like a good plan so I tell him to tear up the banknote and I will go to my bank to cancel the note.
When I go to the bank with my request they tell me that it will cost me $ 20.00 to cancel this note. Unreal. I debate (maybe argue) a little and they say that they will wave the fine. They propose this fine, because head-office has to investigate that the note indeed was not cashed. If the note would have been returned I could just have cancelled it at the bank.  Ok, I phone my brother-in-law in Holland again. He just finished tearing up the note (in little pieces) and put it in the garbage. He just wanted to make sure that nobody could dig up the pieces, putting them together and cash it. Just for me he was willing to dig the pieces of banknote out of the garbage, put them in an envelope and send them to me. I now have prove in case they do not want to wave the fine on this end. Nobody ever told us anything about fines, either in Holland or in Canada.
We all had a good laugh and learned a very valuable lesson. Investigate before you beside.
A new job is waiting me with the translation of parts of the book for my children.
When I phoned my brother-in-law the other day for his birthday he told me that the "snippertjes" (little pieces) are on its way. The Lord has given us common sense and it will all work out for the best.