How To Drive Karen Completely Round the Fucking Bend: A Continuing Saga

[sessifet]

Sponsored by the words What, In, Holy, and Fuck.

Opening a bank account in the UK is like opening a box with the crowbar that's inside. It's like pulling teeth with someone else's fingers*. It's like flogging an elephant to death using only peppermint scented cobwebs. In short, it is turning out to be a bloody impossible nightmare and I have officially reached the point where I am equally torn between laughing hysterically, crying like a lost child and hauling off and hitting someone between the eyes. Hard.



It started with me moving here and wanting a bank account. I tried HSBC. I went into their branch and asked for a bank account. I was asked to bring a tenancy agreement and proof of address. At this point, I had neither. I went to my housemates and kindly requested a tenancy agreement. I was provided with one. I receive a letter from both the Dutch tax office and the student loan office. Pretty official things. I call HSBC and ask if a hand written tenancy agreement counts. It does. I ask if either the letter from the tax office or the student loan office count**. They do.

I go to my NI number appointment. I give them all my stuff. They are happy with all my stuff. I go yay and think 'That was easy.'. I go to HSBC with all my stuff and get told that neither tenancy agreement nor Dutch tax office or Dutch student loan office letters are acceptable as proof of address. By the same lady who told me on the phone that these would suffice! I have had a shitty day what with getting rained on and spending the next 5 hours soaked to the skin. I am >< this close to hypothermia and so I go home feeling rather crap.

Time passes and I get a job. The umbrella company does not pay out to non UK bank accounts^. Joy. Fortunately housemate is kind enough to let me use one of her old bank accounts until I manage to get my grubby paws on my own.

I get busy with job and training and falling over occasionally because my body's not agreeing with this whole new country malarkey and it takes me a while to get my energy up to go into the whole bank account thing again. I decide that HSBC can go sodomise itself with a garden tool of choice and decide to go with NatWest. So off to the branch we toddle (as housemate needs to do some stuff as well). I am helped by a friendly young man who is very helpful if probably somewhat mistaken about the nature of housemate and I's relationship.

I specifically ask if I have everything he needs. I have brought a payslip. I have brought identification. I mention I am on the electoral roll*** since January or February. This is all great.

They want three months worth of payslips to open a bank account.

I explain I've only been working for a few weeks and don't have that many payslips.

No problem, just take all of them into my local branch, have them photo-copied and sent to NatWest. He'll finalise the account as soon as he gets it all. He gives me his card. I sigh in relief. I go to the local branch, have the payslips copied and sent over. I wait.

Time passes.

Time passes some more.

I call NatWest and ask what's going on. Oh dear, the copies never arrived or were never sent off or whatever it was. But they'll send them straight away. Sigh. Thank you.

Time passes as it always does.

Today I get a letter from NatWest. It reads thusly:

Dear Miss S.,

(Look! I am a Miss! Yay.)

Thank you for the pay slips you have provided me with.

(No problem at all, my good man. Now gimme my bank account details.)

Unfortunately,

(Uhoh.)

when I have gone to open the account I now need to obtain confirmation of your address.

(Hmm. Bad grammar there, Where's my red pe...You fucking what?!)

This can be in the form of a recent bank statement or utility bill.

(I don't have a bank statement because I can't fucking get a fucking bank account, you bloody incompetent idiot! What in the name of FUCK do you think I've been trying to do for the past three months?! I also can't give you a sodding utility bill because I am a lodger. Also? I. Have. A. National. Insurance. Number. And another thing?
I. Am. On. The. Mother-Fucking. Electoral. Roll. You. Blithering. Arse-Buggering. Festering. Twat. Muffin! I. Have. A. Sodding. Polling. Card! Do. You. Wish. I. Should. Come. Over. And. Stuff. It. Up. Your. Arse. Sideways? Am. I. Getting. My. Point. Across. Here?)

If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact me.

So I laugh hysterically, and I did contact NatWest. I did not get the nice gentleman who helped me on the phone, but another nice gentleman, who really did not deserve a slightly irate potential customer on the phone. I was very polite, just ever so slightly...tetchy. The guy was very helpful and calm and offered to look up my details right then**** and there so we could clear this up. I give them. We wait a bit. And then he gets back to me, still very helpful but slightly less calm. He can't find me on the updated electoral roll and do I mind if he passes the message on to the other nice gentleman so he can phone me back? I do not mind at all. I am therefore currently waiting for a call.

Seriously, who do I need to fuck to get a damned bank account over here? I swear to all that's holy, I would happily go down on Gordon Brown himself if I thought it would get me a bloody bank account, I am that fed up with this whole stupid business.

Is the idea that I am just ever so slightly getting fucking fed up with this whole song and dance routine coming across at all here? I just want a bank account. I do not want to steal secrets of national importance. I'm not applying for citizenship. I am not applying for benefits. I just want somewhere where I can put in my money. Is that really too much to ask?

* Ew.

** Yes, specifically mentioning the fact that these are Dutch letters. This is not a problem at all, they repeatedly assure me.

^I just typed account as acunt three times before getting it right. You think my brain is telling me something?

*** Granted, it's not the public one for reasons of not wanting to get inundated with spam, but I assume I am on there somewhere. Because, hey! I have a polling card. I can vote, me. Do banks only get access to the public one? I don't know.

**** I'm sure he is always nice and helpful. I am also sure he was extra nice and helpful because one naturally treads carefully when in the vicinity of an obviously lactose intolerant volcano that's just been fed cheese.

Comments

[rjw76]

Might the polling card suffice as proof of address?

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

That is what I am hoping. I'm waiting him to call me back on that before toddling off to the local branch. At this point, though, I've half a mind to give up on NatWest as well and just go for Lloyds.

[shebit.livejournal.com]

I shall resist the urge to attack you with a red pen, because you're only Dutch. Also, you're not in a good mood, so I might regret it.

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

Oh, go ahead. I'm sure I made some bad errors in there. I really don't tend to mind if people poke my spelling and grammar. It was just a thought my brain came up with. I just worry that my first response was 'Bad grammar,' and only the second response was 'What?!'

[shebit.livejournal.com]

It is amusing that you noticed the grammar before the fuckery.

My main big red scribble over your post is over "my housemate and I's" - there is no such word as I's.

I's

[spookfx.livejournal.com]

I's expands to I is:
I is the letter after h?

Re: I's

[shebit.livejournal.com]

*pokes spook in the I*

Re: I's

[pteppic.livejournal.com]

ICON... WANT.

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I was trying to make a possessive out of the compound subject housemate-and-I. :)

[shebit.livejournal.com]

Are you now a gestalt entity?

Our home wi-fi network is still called nandrands, though the N part of our gestalt has deserted us.

[hikari-neko.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the country where it's easier to get a Shotgun Certificate or an FAC than it is to open a bank account. Really.

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

I might have been lucky, but I didn't have any problems getting a bank account when I moved here in '99. I brought along my passport, employment contract, and a letter from the company head of HR (on letterheaded paper) saying that my official address was currently c/o The Company, and can you please help set up this account so they could pay?

[pteppic.livejournal.com]

There does indeed appear to be certain levels of dickery concerned with opening a bank account. I have spent the past two months attempting to open a company bank account.

I now have one.

It was harder than getting prison services security clearance when your family are a bunch of terrorists (which I've had and they were). In fact, once the account was open and they had cashed that nice two grand cheque, getting the *account number* out of them proved to be something of a farce. As did getting more money *into* the account.

After much blood, sweat and tears I think I am finally there.

Just don't mention e-banking.

[sierra-le-oli.livejournal.com]

You have my heartfelt sympathy. We'd been warned about the UK banking situation but thought we'd have it easier than most foreigners because Wingnut's uni has a deal with NatWest. A-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Suggest you do some deep breathing exercises before applying for a credit card. :-(

[winterbay.livejournal.com]

Ehh... Ehh... I don't even know where to begin, there is just so much idiocy there.
The only time I've had to open a bank account abroad was when I, and my girlfriend, was in Spain for about 6 months and decided that it would be cheaper to transfer all the needed money there rather than to use cards all the time. This took about 30 minutes.

Enter bank office, we chose the first one we came across, explain to the man at the desk what we wanted. He took out papers, asked some questions like where we were living (we didn't have to prove it in any way), what our passport numbers were and what our names were. We signed the papers and left with a functioning bank account.

This is just stupid and I can see no reason for a bank to make it that hard to give them your money...

[arwen-lune.livejournal.com]

My sympathies, you know about my experience with UK bank accounts... I really don't understand why all the hoops are needed. Is there some kind of fraud you can do when you have an account to your name or something? They act like you're applying for a bank account with complimentary 10 grand!

[cold-company.livejournal.com]

You're not alone in that one. I can't get a bank account either. Natwest wouldn't even speak to me about opening an account until I showed them my passport or driving license, and it's a similar story elsewhere. Even my own bank can't do it for me because my savings account is in my married name and I don't use that anymore, so all my proof of address is in my maiden name. The refuse to change the name on my account back to my maiden name in spite of the fact that I haven't used my married name for 10 years.

The lengths you have to go to here to get a bank account are ridiculous.

[ailbhe]

What I did in 1998 was to go in with an existing customer and minimal ID. He introduced me to the staff and said I wanted to open an account, they leapt on me gratefully, I had an account and a Solo card within the week. Have you tried finding a "good customer" to tag along with?

Have you tried the Co-Op? Or goat sacrifice?

[pteppic.livejournal.com]

That was '98. Chunks of the hoops now come from all the different chunks of legislation the banks now need to jump through.

First it started with "know your customer".
Then we had the first wave of money laundering laws.
Then we had the terrorism act.
Then we had the second wave of money laundering laws.
Then we had the revisions to the Banking Code.
As well as the two revisions to the DPA of course.
Oh yes, and now there's new restrictions being investigated regards the storage, retrieval and transportation of sensitive information.

On their own they all make sense. The hell comes when you put them all together, and the policies that support them grow organically as each new act is introduced.

What you're left with is a situation where non-citizen UK residents are in a frickin' mess. Funnily enough, *unless* they're a student.

The ability to walk in with someone who's a current account holder went out with one of the money laundering laws if I remember correctly (pol may be able to clarify). You now need independent, verifiable ID (which gets interesting if you don't drive or hold a passport).

Goat and/or chicken sacrifice is still a tried and tested method with an average 15% success rate (lunar cycle dependant).

[arwen-lune.livejournal.com]

It certainly wasn't easy when I was a student - 10 weeks, 3 banks and many many hoops later I had an account.

[pteppic.livejournal.com]

I do apologize. I'll rephrase a little. There are exceptions in place for students due to "exceptional circumstances". As an aside, if you want to help terrorists with some money laundering, being a foreign student is *the* best way to do it.

[swaldman.livejournal.com]

Well as you've gathered, UK banks are famous for assuming that furriners don't exist, or at least are only there for nefarious reasons. It's probably part of the same attitude that means that international transfers cost £18.

I've watched a German gentleman who started in my office just after me trying to get himself set up, while he was staying in short-term rented accomodation... couldn't open a bank account, couldn't get an NI number due to lack of any proof of address, couldn't get PAID by work (in the end work have just sent him cheques, but guess what, without a bank account to pay them into...)

I don't know what to suggest. Back in my uni days NatWest had a reputation for being more useful than most about this, but it sounds like this is no longer the case.

Oh, yes, the banks will only have the public electrol roll - the point about the private one is that it is ONLY for electerol purposes (yay, some privacy / data management that sort of works).

@Arwen: it's not the fraud that you can commit with an account in your name that they're worried about, it's the fraud that you can commit with an account in somebody *else*'s name - which is why they're paranoid about your identity.
Also because UK law is, IIRC, such that if a bank account is used for money laundering and they haven't taken "adequate measures" to protect against this (primarily by being sure of id), the bank is liable to prosecution. I think.