Original Documents

I'm moving to London. Exciting.

Less exciting, however, is the process of doing this. Specifically, dealing with letting agents and a new landlord. I don't mind the letting agents stealing my wallet every time I enter their premises. I don't mind that the landlord is trying to slip a clause into the contract saying everything I move into the house becomes his property. I don't mind that all amounts in the contract are actually written in an obscure currency which has a symbol nearly identical to £, but means I pay triple what I expected - this is all fairly standard fare.

What I do mind, is the constant requests for 'original documents' and 'paper proof'.

I don't have any bank statements. I don't have any bills with my address on them. I don't have any 'formal letters' (whatever they are). I use the Internet* for everything. On the off-chance someone does send me something in such an archaic format as paper, I generally throw it in the bin unread.

Whilst we're on the subject, I don't have a fax machine. I don't want to print off the attachment you've emailed me, sign it and then fax it back to you. A fax machine isn't more secure than a scanned email. A digital signature is legally binding. The 80's are dead.

Frankly, the past couple of weeks would have been a hell of a lot easier if I just forged a document every time someone asked for one. I wonder when someone's going to notice I've just Photoshopped the signature from my driving license into every document they asked me to print, sign and scan. I wonder if they do notice, if they'll question quite how ridiculously insecure an unwitnessed signature is.

Finally, I get annoyed that 'insecure' next to 'unwitnessed' looks horrible. But I still don't think we should standardise anything. Except power supply connectors.

--
_{*And I'm still cool enough to capitalise the 'I'}