A Day Benighted by the Student Loans Company

There I was this morning, happily making my way to work when I thought I'd check my bank balance. In goes my card, out comes a statement, and... At first I was pleased because I thought that my cheque for the new And Also The Trees album had cleared. I was quite worried about this as I thought I had written out the cheque incorrectly - all blown over! The money was out of my account, I could sit back and relax and look forward to 'Hunter not the Hunted' and 'Driftwood' (their previous mini album) coming through the post. I looked again. There was rather more taken out than a couple of albums worth... in fact £155 more... I looked at the statement. No cheque had been taken, but instead those dread words 'Student Loan Company'.
I had sent off my deferment form a few weeks ago, along with the necessary documentation to defer payments for yet another year. I hadn't heard anything back yet but was not surprised as they can be notoriously slow in replying to any correspondence. I spent the morning seething, in a foul mood at (possibly) losing £155 for whatever reason. I remembered a time previous that I ended up owing them £1,200 because they had sent out the forms to the wrong address. It took nearly two years to pay that off even if that had been their error too.
The lunchtime was spent in HSBC trying to see if I could get the money refunded under the direct debit guarantee.
The afternoon crawled by.
Despite working in a call centre, I have an actual fear of using the phone to sort out any business pertaining to myself. All I wanted to do was to get home, call them, and get everything sorted out so I could go back tow orrying about whether my cheque for the And Also The Trees albums had cleared.
I reached home, put some credit onto my phone when there was a sudden knocking at the door. No-one ever knocks at the door. It was Ben, returning some money for Andy. Ben left, and finally I could get on with trying to sort this thing out that had been worrying me all day... only to be told that their systems were down and to 'call back tomorrow'.