Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Monday, 3 September 2012

A little paper war



Three plus nine equals twelve. Did you notice the date today? I don’t know what you call it but I do like it.  

You’ve no idea how hard it is to get someone at a post office to sign a piece of official paper from the Post Office back home in NZ; that proved we are who we say we are.

OK step back a few months. If you are sitting comfortably, then I’ll begin

We have used the address of daughter number two as our mailing address back in NZ.  Said daughter moved several months ago, so we needed to change our mailing address. Sounds simple. Well mostly it has been. All it took was an email, or even a phone call. That is until it came to our bonus bonds.  Now, we didn’t want to actually access the money involved, just to change the mailing address. When I made the original phone call the person I spoke to back home in NZ said that mail had been returned so we did need to change the address. Well we knew that didn’t we?

Trouble is itI not something we can do in a phone call. So what do we do?

Print off the required form and take it into a Bank or post office    over here and have them do the verifying. Simple. Not. 

Why so. Well on Saturday morning we went in to the  local Post Office here t Crystal Palace and were met with a ‘sorry but this branch is not authorised to do this kind of thing’ despite me arguing the toss with the chappie behind the counter we came out frustrated and  signatureless. Bugga.

So The Man took his passport and his paperwork in with him today. And I took mine. Oh did I fail to mention that as the bonds are in both our names we both have to have ourselves verified.
So at lunch time today I walked all the way to the other end of Canary Wharf where a very helpful teller at the bank where we are customers, and within minutes I was able to walk out with my completed paperwork. And The man? Well he had a similar pleasant experience at a branch of this bank near to his work.  

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