The Easy Way To Change Address

See, this is how I like to spend my precious days off. Dealing with fun administrative things, like changing the address my shares are registered to. This, it turns out, is not straightforward but as I'm in a good mood today I can appreciate the madness of bureaucracy.

My path to this change starts with an email I received from the nominee company which holds my shares. This is from the text of that email:

A number of recent changes in legislation have made it easier for companies to communicate with their shareholders electronically. To support these changes, Computershare is introducing a number of enhancements to our eCommunications service:

Investor Centre offers a host of online functions through our member service, which is designed to make managing your holdings easier, including:
- Change of address
- Creating or updating bank mandates
- Online share dealing

The second paragraph is of course of particular interest to me, so I dig out my shareholder reference number and hungrily log on to their site. I prove my credentials, see my details and click the "Address Change" link.

There are multiple ways to change your address. Please select your preferred method from the options below.

Option 1 - Online

For members only.

Members can change their address for a single holding or their entire portfolio online.

Log in using the member area to the left.

If not a member, please register or click here to learn more about the benefits of membership.

Oh well, I'm not actually a member but there seems to be a registration process I can go through online. So we'll click "register" and see what happens.

Please complete the following registration form.

Choose a User ID and password that’s easy to remember, as you’ll need this each time you visit Investor Centre.

Your User ID must be between 6 to 30 alphanumeric characters. Your password must be 5 or more alphanumeric characters. Note your password is case sensitive.

So far so good. The next big throws a spanner in the works:

* indicates a mandatory field.
MR JAMES MASTERTON
(My address underneath)

PLEASE NOTE: For security reasons, we will mail you a confirmation of registration to this address.

If this is NOT your correct address, please call us at +44 (0)870 702 0000 to have your address updated BEFORE you complete your registration. If this address is correct, please complete the Member Details section below.

Ah. So in order to register to change my address online, I need to have a document mailed to me at my address, which of course has now changed. Never mind. There is a useful telephone number I can call.

Ring it up, select from the menu of options, identify the company I am calling about, identify myself via my shareholders reference number and select the option to "change your address".

Recorded voice lady tells me that to change my address I need to complete a change of address form which they can mail to me. Press 1 if you want this sent to your current registered address, Press 2 if you would like this sent to a different address.

I press 2. Then I am quickly transferred to a customer service drone who retrieves from the computer the requests I have made and then realises he has to go check if what I want to do is actually possible. Three minutes later he returns, confirms that he must send a form out and happily takes my new address, not to add to my account but simply so he can send a change of address form to it.

After hanging up I reflect on what has just happened. I have rung up and told them my new address, so they can send to it a form on which I can tell them my new address, to which they will be able to send me the registration form which enables me to register with their online service, one of the benefits of which is so I can change my address.

Who wants to bet that this is just a button to click so they can send me the form? I may decide never to move house again just to spite them.