An alien in UK - Life offline

Among the things at the top on my list of to-do’s after we arrived in Westhill were getting a UK bank account, a UK phone number and broadband connection. It did not take me long to realise that these things were more urgent than expected.

UK bank account

The first thing I set about to get sorted was to get a UK bank account, as I’d been told this could be a bit of a hassle. This turned out to be true. I also soon realised that I could do very little online shopping until I had a UK account, including ordering broadband and topping up my SIM-card.

The requirements for getting a UK bank account was, in addition to the necessary ID papers, that you could show documentation of you UK residency. As I had no employer who could provide me with the necessary documentation, I needed a utility bill with my name on it. Unfortunately the bills had come in my husband’s name. The solution was to ask for the next bills to be sent in both our names and in the meantime get a UK bank account for my husband. Until the necessary documentation arrived, I used my husband’s card and account. Problem solved.

I imagine foreigners moving to Norway experience similar problems, I just haven’t thought about this before. When things are running smoothly, you tend not to think about them, it’s when they’re not working that you realise the complexity of it all.

One thing that I’m fascinated by is how much in the UK society is paid either by cash or by cheque. In Norway I hardly ever have any cash, as I use my credit cards for almost all purchases. And I’ve never used a cheque in all my life. When I received a refund in the form of a cheque, I hardly knew what to do with it. I took the cheque to the bank and it turned out they had special machines to handle cheques. A friendly lady showed me how to insert my cheque into the machine and then told me that the amount on the cheque would be credited to my account. And it actually did. This was a completely new experience for me and I was mighty impressed.

UK phone number

As soon as I started interacting with school, the gym, the community centre etc., everyone asked for a contact number. When I only had a Norwegian number to offer them, they were not too keen and did not always take down my number.

After a lot of research when it comes to coverage and pricing of calls to Norway, I ordered a SIM-card from Lebara. When the SIM-card arrived in the mail a few days later, it turned out it was a standard SIM and my mobile required a micro SIM. Without Lebara’s SIM card I was unable to call their customer service and after a week of waiting for them to reply to my email, I gave up and ordered a SIM card from Vodafone. After I received the correct type of SIM-card, I spent 2-3 days trying to top up the pay-as-you-go card. It turned out this could only be done with a UK bank account, my Norwegian Mastercard was obviously not good enough, but their cryptic error messages were not very useful either. In the end I managed to top up the account with my husband’s UK Visa Debit card at the local ATM-machine, very simple and convenient.

After testing and making sure everything was working the way it should, I started using the Vodafone number this as my contact number. I spent very little time at home, but after a few days I discovered that the coverage at home was so poor I was lucky if I got any reception at all. I ended up walking a few hundred metres down our street before the reception was acceptable. I had some rather cold phone calls to family and friends in Norway. This wasn’t a solution I was happy with, as it meant that I wouldn’t be able to receive any calls when I was at home.

I used my Norwegian SIM-card over the next few days and discovered that O2 was the one with the most stable and consistent signal, so I ordered yet another micro SIM. This time my efforts were crowned with success and I’ve been happy with the service ever since.

Broadband connection

From the date I ordered broadband from BT, it took four weeks to get Internet access. The first three weeks were spent waiting for an available BT technician. In the end it turned out they did not have to send out a technician, they just had to do something on their side and we were good to go. The only problem was that we had not received our broadband hub or the phone handsets we had ordered when we ordered the broadband and phone subscriptions, so we could not use our services. A week later the broadband hub was ready for delivery, but the handsets were still missing. I cancelled our order for the handsets and the broadband hub was finally delivered to our house. While we were offline I discovered how much I’ve come to depend on being online. While we were waiting to have broadband installed at home I would go to the library every day to use their WIFI network. If I needed to use the Internet outside of their opening hours I just had to wait till the next day, contributing to things taking longer than normal. Now I can go online any time I like and I LOVE IT!