One of the main things we didn't achieve while in the UK was to get our address changed with our bank. I'd better not name names, I suppose, but their service has been unbelievably awful. We would normally change banks immediately in the face of such incompetence, but it's impossible to open any new accounts while you're living overseas - you need personal ID confirmation and proof of address. Which of course, we don't have.
Before we left the UK in 2006 we both wrote numerous letters and filled in countless forms requesting change of address. I was forced to travel 10 miles into town as they were unsure of my signature. On that occasion it turned out they had lost all the paperwork dealing with my name change after marriage and so I had to go through all that again. Unbelievable.
We'd set up a mail re-direct for a few months sending everything to Mum's house where she would sort through the junk mail and send relevant letters onto us. Which is how we realised no change of address had taken effect with this particular bank / building society.
Tim set up all his accounts to have his work address on them while I set mine up to come to our home here in Japan. Neither had been actioned.
So every time we passed one of their branches we would go in to try again. And again. AND AGAIN!
We got precisely nowhere. (It took 2 years before they finally got my address changed successfully and this involved me writing a four page complaint letter to their head office. Which, coincidentally, was just 4 miles from our old home in Northampton! If only I'd known before we left the UK.)
I don't have great hopes for much success when we move again.
There were other things we didn't do either, but in the interest of family harmony I have just deleted that paragraph. It may arise again later…
