Everyday Stranger

Sounds like sooooo much fun [/sarcasm].

what, no st. paddy's day post?! ;)

I have to love the fact that you are in the same county let alone the same country as me and just down the M4....

Banks are a bitch no matter which country you are in I remember the days before ATMs' when changing travellers cheques in Italy required you to bring along a couch and a picnic basket as you would be there long enough to need both!

You'll get used to our quirky ways and be calling apartments, flats and subletting, renting.

Occasionally even northerners called Bark-Shur, berkshire.... and I laugh.

We thought about calling foreigners "inbred rejects from inferior countries", but "aliens" seemed nicer:) Who says we're not sensitive here in America?

Before anyone goes getting all upset, I'm 100% joking (not even a hint of truth or seriousness in that last paragraph).

To the person who wrote that Kiwis are *inbreds*..I take exception to that!(What a racist statement!) We are NOT INBRED.. Im a kiwi living in the States for 2 yrs now.And it took me over a yr to open my own bank account here because I had to wait til I got a social security number! And it cost me $7000 US for an immigration attorney..so far,in 2 yrs I have spent over $50,000 in this country and the economy here.Im still called an ALIEN..which I object to.At least kiwis dont call overseas visitors ALIENS!

I have a question for ya.
In which direction do you look first when you try to cross a street over here?
Someone brought to my attention the other night while taking a stroll down the area that I will be run over at some point since I look to the left and then begin to cross the road when there's no car coming :p

I'm slowly learning that I should look in the right direction first, THEN to my left before I begin to cross that street, or I will end up like a label on the front of a truck.

Confusing ya know when you've been use to have all traffic on the right side all your life and then all of a sudden those rules are changed.
And I'm not quite that anxious to learn about the UK health care just yet...not in that kinda way anyways ;)

Sorry, me again. Just realized that the INS is now called the USCIS and not the BCIS (that was one of their previous name changes. And yes, the "S" still stands for the ironic "Services."). My bad! But see? I can't even keep track anymore!
R.

I've been reading (and enjoying!) your blog for a while now, but this is the first time that I'm commenting, because this time I can actually empathize with you!

You see, I'm going through the same trial (but to a worse extent, if possible!) in your home country. Granted, I overstayed my visa and became entangled in the woes of all that it means to be an illegal immigrant in the States (but, to my defense: the family I worked for as a nanny had a pretty screwed up life, and I stayed on for the sake of the children. Unfortunately that saying: "no good deed goes unpunished" became all too true for me!).

Just before he left office though, Clinton passed a bill to benefit out of status people like me, which basically allowed me to get a sponsor (but only in name, because I'm paying my own legal fees, and the premise of the law is also entirely ridiculous... they expect someone to freeze a position especially for you until you can legally work.). So, six and a half thousand dollars and counting (excluding a $1,000 fine to the INS for overstaying my visa) and three years after filing, I'm still stuck in immigration limbo: I can't yet get a social security number, therefore I can't get a driver's license, open a bank account (not even a temporary one!) or work. Even worse than that is that I can't go home to see my family, and nobody can tell me when this will change. The INS (who, by the way, has changed their name about three times since late last year and is now known as the Bureau for Citizenship and Immigration Services... that last word being a bit of a joke, in my opinion!) has a backlog that stretches back into the 90's (and you thought it was bad to wait for the British for a few weeks!), so to me there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I know I never should've stayed on with the family after my visa had expired, but in my opinion, this punishment I'm going through does NOT warrant the crime. So, girl, be grateful that you can at least work, come and go as you please and open a bank account, even if it is only a temporary one.
Good luck to you though, because I know that frustration feels the same for people, even if our circumstances are different. (Sorry that I hogged the comments like this... As you can tell I'm a bit passionate about this, because it's my life!) Keep on writing! Red.

I can see it already...

"Hey Lloyd! What did you do last night mate?"

"Ummm... well I..."

Classic.

took my daughter about three months to open her english bank account, and that was with her brother-in-law working at the bank!

And I remember visiting her there, and standing in line at the checkout. Waiting. And Waiting. until Jade said you have to pack your own bags, AND the checkout chicks are all sitting down!!

Maybe you should vote, just once, anyway. That way you can open your bank account and Lloyd doesn't have to worry about hitting the cup.

It's funny the bank gave you a hard time opening the account, but once you opened it they gave you a gold card. "At least she was one of our terrorists..."

rich.. very rich..

At least you speak the language. You should have seen us opening a bank account at our local Citibank. We chose Citibank because we thought that they would be able to speak English, but it didn't seem like they really could while we were there. I wrote about it (http://kohpotts.typepad.com/japan/2003/09/banking_at_citi.html).

Anyway, I recently went to open a bank account at an actual Japanese bank. Surprisingly, it went smoothly, since I had my Alien Registration Card (yup, I'm an ALIEN) and my hanko (name stamp) with me, so with some miming and nodding and a few words in Japanese, they set me up with an account. Not quickly, mind you, but with less trauma than at Citibank. Strange.

Ahh, the memories. I lived with my husband in New Zealand for two years. Upon arrival, I confidently took my bank check for 25,000 to open an account. They told me they'd have to get back to me, I would have to be APPROVED and they wouldn't accept the BANK CHECK until it had CLEARED. Then they lost the check somewhere for three weeks, which, if you've ever lived with those inbred Kiwis for any period of time, you know is not that unusual.

The bank broke me. Up until then I had held together fairly well under the complete indifference of every person in that second world country, but when the bank refused to open an account with an insured bank draft - well, I lost it. My husband had to take me for a cup of tea and listen to me rant and cuss for about half an hour. "What type of godforsaken country is this? In the States the bank would be all smiles and give me a toaster for opening up a $25,000 account, and here they have to APPROVE taking my money! Thanks for the fucking favor, you bunch of wankers" and so forth. Yecchh. There are a lot of things about the U.S. I don't much miss, but customer service? Man, nobody can beat us!

I'll bring a lil bit of fresh orange juice and we'll make Screwdrivers...a whole toolbox of them :p

If you have any trouble with Lloyd...

... do you think a ziplock bag will hold up in the mail?

Always looking to help.

oh yes and in France I had to be subservient, patient and qwuiet (none of which I am), go get my paper stamped by 4 people and then do the holy dance on them with the lady who like Trinny had cameras everywhere, before I got an account. which yes was all AFTER I already had the address. and I just found out that the account is all messed up.

People think living and moving abroad is all fun. Lots of fun yes. all fun, hell NO.

hope you are having fun learning english. I had a guy here come up last week and say to the group I was in that he needed someone who spoke english. I said what do you need. He said no- I need to talk to the native english speaker... umm ok sure spanish was my first language and all but I was only raised in the states and spoke....

yeah gotta love it!

Somehow I think Lloyd is in for one of the more interesting nights of his life... poor bastard doesn't know what he is up against =)

Just a note from someone who was a banker in a previous life, all the ID hassle and verifying address, etc is to protect the bank from fraud. The bad guys continue to come up with new and interesting ways to use the banks services against them, check kiting, international wire transfers, etc, all made possible by having an account someplace in good standing. All Miriam Softtushy is doing is following rules setup to limit the exposure to these types of schemes.

That said, and with the exception of my friends still in the biz, all bankers are cold heartless bastards and should be strung up by their, *cough*, ah, ahum, sorry, got carried away there...

As far as names go, I am not sure which is worse, the people, or the places. If I met a Johnathan Wifflepee from Glouchistshirebrough I am not sure what would put me on the floor first, his name, or where he is from. Must be a giggle a minute for you Helen

Have fun with it, and everything else while you're at it =)

Dane

Oh yes, the other thing is that they don't attach credit records to PEOPLE, they attach them to POSTCODES. So, if your last name is extremely common, oh let's say "Johnson," and you rent a flat where someone else who had the last name of Johnson lived in the past 5 years, your credit record is tied to that person.

This means that you can end up getting denied credit because of some other fucker who couldn't be bothered to pay her store cards off. The only way to get rid of it is to buy your credit record and write a letter dissociating yourself from the asshole who is ruining your credit.

However, it doesn't always work, because if there was someone else living in that flat who committed fraud, even if they moved in AFTER you moved out, and even if they have an entirely different last name, you get stuck with their FRAUD record on YOUR credit record. Companies say they aren't allowed to take that into account, but they fucking well do.

As you might have guessed, all of these things happened to me--someone who has never missed a payment on anything and doesn't go overdrawn.

Oh yes--and if you live in a new block of flats with a new postcode, people will say "That postcode doesn't exist; therefore I can't sell you this [whatever]." AAARRRGGHHH!!!!

Still, I wouldn't go back to the USA if you paid me.

Note to self: never type with cream cheese on your fingers. Blech.

You've sent me on a memory trip to Germany in 1993, when I was working there and assumed that hey, I can open an account here if I work here, right? WRONG. Dude. I worked there 5 months; it took 3 to get the account. By the end we'd dragged in my host family, my boss and two letters of recommendation from my sponsors. All of this to get service from a bank that was closed from 2-7 every frigging day.

Hope it's easier on you!

Ahhh, yes. I should have warned you about the British obsession with getting your address before letting you store their money with them. They need an address for EVERYTHING. It's fucking stupid.

One way to get around it is to get your place of employment to write a letter that says "Helen is living at such-and-such address. Stop being a FUCKING DICK and give her a FUCKING BANK ACCOUNT. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, if she ran away, YOU'D STILL HAVE HER MONEY!!!!!"

. . . but maybe not in those words exactly.

I hope you're not using NatWest. They treated me like a criminal for a year. Barclays is far better, and has good online banking. I think Abbey National is supposed to be decent too.

Another thing to beware of is that they look at you like you're a retard if you expect that they will be bagging your groceries. Though they might do that in Sweden, I don't know. And they give you your change and your card and your receipt all at the same time in the most inconvenient way possible. Fuckers.

Trinny Maplemuffin sounds Canadian to me.

Because of the difficulty of opening a bank account when you come from overseas, and the fact that over 50% of the people at my work do, we've got an arrangement with one of the banks nearby and the chief administrator chap at work does all the organising personally. That saves a lot of hassle in the long run. I guess it also explains why there are so many places around that'll cash payroll cheques without you needing a bank account.

When you go back to the bank to finalise opening the account, make sure you ask to see plenty of identification for the person who's dealing with you. After all, you wouldn't want all that personal information to fall into the wrong hands (and let's not even get started on the test tube).

Great post, Helen! I needed a good laugh this morning.

Hard time opening a bank account??...wait 'til you ask for ice in your drink!!

London is a third world country..sorry, I just had to say it - enjoy yourself.

If it makes you feel any better, The US makes it just as hard for English people to open a bank account, and getting a credit card was even more difficult. Fifteen years of perfect credit history in the UK was of no interest to the American credit companies.....

I would love to meet Trinny Maplemuffin, by the way....... ;)

I don't know if it's changed recently but a lot of POMs used to have their bank accounts at the Post Office because it was too hard to open a bank account even if you were a POM.

From your description it's gotten a lot easier. It used to be that you could only open an account if you were nominated by at least 3 people who already had accounts at that bank. Kind of like a fraternity etc

POMMIES are so quaint - it's sort of a love hate type of thing!

Miguel-absolutely right. I reckon it could be worse. Things can ALWAYS be worse!

Rob-I promise I wasn't having a go at England:)

Croxie-I'll bring the vodka, you bring the cranberry juice. It'll be an online, virtual alcoholic fest!

... good for Lloyd! ;-). Helen dear, it could be worse, couldn´t it? Imagine life 6 in... Mozambique. I can guarantee it would be much worse. Well, in some things it would. Mozambique has nicer weather, food, and friendlyer people. Never mind... Love, Miguel.

Well, this is one of the things ppl warned me about...trying to get a bank account in the UK as a forigner is like trying to get a ticket to the next trip to Mars.

But it's true...when you're a citizen you don't have to consider all these things. I've been through similar things in the US though and it's a hassel. Even if you're married to a citizen it can be tricky.

Maybe we will share that vodka in a few days coz I'm going through the exact same thing ;)

Good luck *hugs*

Trinny Maplemuffin - I've so met her!!! Although to be fair to my fair homeland, it's just as hard opening a bank account if you do have the correct documentation. They refused to let me open a savings account because my signature on my pasport didn't match my current signature - I've had my passport since I was 16!

Glad to hear you're enjoying life 6 so far.