[marcia]

Trying to sort out all the paper work cancelling direct debits and getting refunds - what a flipping nightmare - the easiest and most simple and helpful was Yorkshire Water - sorted in about 5 mins no long holding in a queue - feel like my ear is going to drop off listening to that horrid music!!!!!!!!

WHY haven't the inland revenue got a central database to sort things out - had to ring 4 separte sections to sort out child benefit, Ni contributions, working tax crdits and normal tax - then two of those can't take the details until after the date you are going???????????????????????????

TV licence won't deal with me because stuff is in Kev's name - I'm going to make sure all the bills are sorted in my name in NZ since i am the one who always has to phone up and sort everything out!!

We have had vodafone on the phone everyday so far a different person wanting to know if there is problem why are we cancelling the contract - USE THE SCREEN IN FRONT OF YOU YOU THICK PEOPLE TYPE IN THEY ARE EMIGRATING!!!!! Instead of wasting my time ringing everyday!!!

Be warned if you have an NTL account - 2 HOURS on the phone being transferred from one department to another and back again, USELESS.

Start sorting those accounts out now, in fact I'd advise cancelling the directs immediately and let them send you bills, its easier than trying to get refunds!!

And the council tax - well the cheeky beggers - you can have 6 months exemption on an empty house but then they expect you to pay 90 PERCENT??????? You get a 25% reduction for single occupancy so what that all about - well they can chase me ifthe house hasn't sold in 6 months - I'm not paying anyone that much - its a toatl rip off - we won't even be using any of the services, fire, refuse collections etc so how can they charge that - daylight robbery!!!!

OK rant over - better get back to the lists!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :(

[willsken]

Know the feeling re the empty house and council tax! Rip off. :mad:

I am going to do as you suggested and cancel my DD's for some things. :)

[willsken]

Know the feeling re the empty house and council tax! Rip off. :mad:

I am going to do as you suggested and cancel my DD's for some things. :)

Chin up not long to go now!!

[Trigirl]

I've been doing this with our DD's. We're down to just 7 that need cancelling when we leave (electricity, water, council tax, mortgage, 2 for the landline and one for my mobile). Then about 3 or 4 that are going to stay that need transferring to our new Nationwide account.

[gil]

And what about Sky??!! They wouldn't deal with Steve (account in MY name!) and when I rang, of course I didn't know the password, so I had to answer the security questions, date of birth and mother's maiden name...only to be told that my mother's maiden name WAS my passsword, so I would have to create a new password. So I did. I then got put on hold whilst they transferred me to a "different department"....it sounded like a different country to be honest, but then a nice Scottish man came on the line and asked for my NEW password...which I told him, and then he said "So how can I help you?" to which I replied "I want to cancel my contract, please" :D

BT were OK, really quick and efficient. Turnd out, one of the dads in Franca's class wrote the programme that get your BT contracts cancelled, so he was delighted when I told him how good it was!

Have to say, Steve's had most of the aggro with this, bless him!

Chins up though, it's all in a good cause....

Gil

[Diny]

Marcia - excellent advice about cancelling DD's now and reverting back to paying the bill once it lands on the doormat - I wish we'd though of that - it was a nightmare (which extended at least 3 months into our time here in NZ).

Hope everything else is going well - see you soon.

Diny

[Carol]

WHY haven't the inland revenue got a central database to sort things out - :(

:laugh :laugh :laugh

'Cause that would be too organised and too much like common sense eh?

[jubjub]

Oh, I remember sky, you got sent to India unless you wanted to cancel, then they transferred you to, a UK based centre to talk you into staying...

I think its a deliberate in many ways to keep your business, but in our situation its maddening, I like Marcias idea, cancel DD early and get bills for a month or two...

it took four months after we moved out to get our Scottish gas account finallised, they managed the leccy right, but not the gas bit, even though we owed them some money..! Thank god for email contact and complaint forms online.

Tackle them one at a time, and they will gradually disappear, TV licence I think we filled in a form on the back of the licence and sent it back to get cancelled & refunded?

Hopefully everyones houses will sell before any council tax nonsense kicks in..

[sizzlingbadger]

We had huge problems in the UK with cancelling stuff as it was all in my husband's name, we even kept the mortgage just in his name as it was easier than getting me put on it in the end.

Here some of the things that are in my husband's name they will still deal with me, unlike the UK who said no have to speak to the person whose on the contract. Much easier to set up and cancel dd's as well, the only time I've had a huge wait and horrible music is when I phoned the British Embassy in Wellington. So it must be a British thing :D

[sarahw]

Well one good thing is you can have joint names on NZ bills!!! So they don't refuse to speak to you!!

I remember how frustrating it was trying to cancel everything - in the end I just cancelled DD's and then when people chased me up for payment I cancelled things.

I remember Vodafone being so hard - they just couldn't compute someone emigrating - flip people are leaving UK in droves you'd think they'd have it as an option on their database!!

I also remember AA insurance refused to speak to me (because Ian's name was on the account) and so I told them fine I'm cancelling the DD because it comes out of MY account!!! My Dad was given power of attourney for Ian when we left since we were still selling our house & had to have the property insured - they REFUSED to deal with power of attourney!!! Can you believe it?! What would have happened if he'd been a vegetable in a car crash & Ian could no longer speak to them?! He had to phone from NZ and tell them they had permission to deal with power of attourney - officious little ........!!

I did, however, find that most people when they found out we were emigrating went from being the usual faceless call-centre people to being very chatty, asking lots of questions about NZ!!

Just look forward - in general people in call-centres in NZ will be on the phone for ages with you having a chat & passing the time of day! I couldn't believe it when I moved here & phoned UK after 6 months to cancel some stuff how cardboard and rude all the people were we spoke to all speaking off a script as if they really didn't want to be there & I was a complete inconvenience to their day - when I asked someone 'how's it going' I got a complete blank! I'd got used to asking people how their day was going & having a bit of a chat and a laugh on the phone - it made me v. happy I'd made the move!!

[sizzlingbadger]

I found that here, after BE phone call I had a message asking to ring the Immigration about my RRV. I was really anxious thinking something was wrong, so rang back. I got 'Hi, how are you doing ?' rather than an abrupt 'how can I help you'. They then went onto explain that I didn't need to fill the form in and it would be $40 not $100 for transferring a visa. They then finished with 'I hope you have a great holiday'.

Much nicer than the well routined quotes Call Centres usually give.

[jubjub]

I have to say my call centre experiences here have been far more pleasant than in the UK (or should I say Bangalore, where they all sit!) nice friendly folks, sort things out there and there, and you dont feel as though you are stopping them from playing solitaire or whatever else they were doing....

Although I did see a rumour that one company here was thinking of outsourcing its call centre, I think it was to the Phillipines....

[olivia]

I've already cancelled some of my direct debits in anticipation, but as our account is with First Direct i can cancel them in a second online anyway.

On the subject of call centres I had a prang in my Golf in a Tesco's car park at the start of August so rang Direct Line to tell them. They were great to start with but the claim (not my fault BTW) took 2.5 months and i only got my car back last week. The problem was they gave me a courtesy car but i had to keep ringing them each week to ask them to renew it with Enterprise (why they didn't book it for longer initially i don't know as we knew the parts for my car weren't going to be in the country til Oct). So you can probably guess that each week when i rang the person i spoke to never had any idea what was going on and i haven't got enough fingers and toes to count how many times i was passed on to someone else.
However, the icing on the cake was when, after 6 weeks of me dealing with them, when i rang for the usual 'Can you please extend my hire car' i was told 'Sorry we can't speak to you as you're only the named driver on the insurance policy, we can only speak to your husband' and after about 5 minutes of trying to explain to them that i had the crash, the car is mine not Stephens they still refused to speak to me so i'm afraid to say i lost my rag a bit and swore and hung up. So Stephen had to ring them to arrange MY hire car.

So Direct Line Car Insurance is one of the Direct Debits I am definitely looking forward to cancelling.

Sorry, just realised this post has turned into a rant.
BTW, I did eventually get my car back last Thursday.

Olivia

[gil]

Wow, Olivia, that must have been sooooo irritating for you! Glad you've got your car back!
I'm still waiting for Enterprise to send me a cheque for £145 when a hire car of theirs (which I picked up on a Friday morning, then parked in my drive and didn't move till I was due to drive to Northampton on the Sunday afternoon) had a complete flat tyre. I followed their instructions for out of hours, which resulted in the AA coming out (a very nice man, really!), They put the spare on which turned out to be a space saver tyre, which means you can't go faster than 50 mph and can only really drive for a limited local mileage. I.E. to Kwik Fit for a new tyre at £145!!!
I rang them at 8 am the next day and they were fine, promising to refund it. Well, that was the 2nd of October and we are still waiting. At last today we got through to their Accounts Dept and they said it would be with us by Tuesday latest....not holding my breath as I've been told it's been sent at least 4 times so far!! Grrrr!

Gil
x

[willsken]

Well, I started by cancelling Sky today. On hold for 35 minutes for the first operator then passed on to someone to see if he could get me to stay... No I'm emigrating... Oh is anyone in the house staying? .... No we are all going..... Oh so there is nothing I can do to help you? NO!!! Just cancel the dam subscription. I've been on this phone nearly 45 minutes!!!!! :mad:

[olivia]

Gil, you've just reminded me, the hire car i had from Enterprise had a slow puncture and i also had to ring the AA. The nice man from the AA came and put on the spare only to find it was a 13 inch wheel when all my others were 14 inch wheels. Luckily this was the day before my car was due back so i got someone to look after my son and drove it back to Enterprise and dumped it on them. They obviously don't pay too much attention to the roadworthyness (is that a word?) of their cars. It certainly wasn't fun wobbling round all the corners between here and my local Enterprise centre.

I had to drive 60 miles on a spacesaver tyre when i had a puncture on a previous car and as you can't safely go on the motorway at that speed it took me a very long time to get home.

Did you pay by cheque for your hire car as refunds to credit cards are usually done straightaway?

Hope you get your money soon,

Olivia

[katandbob]

Hee hee Marcia, reading those posts brought back memories!, NTL took 6mths to sort out, and it was a good job that I cancelled everything when we moved into MILS, and not like everyone else as it would have been a complete nightmare.

As to Call centres/ cancelling things here, its been a breeze so far, I had to cancel Xtra because of them not being able to provide Broadband (ooh and dont get me started on the speed of that!!!!) Telecom do charge for every thing...cancelling, transfering etc but they do it with a friendly chat so I didn't feel half as ripped off.......which is strange really I should have been mad for being charged $49 to change addresses??? but I must be getting that Kiwi laid back approach, because I just said thanks for sorting it out so quickly!

Good luck

Kat

[Cardy]

We cancelled everything before we left uk and we were still being billed for stuff and sent post about it 4 months later i had to ring some companies about 6 times from nz before i finally got them sorted, and british gas even tried charging me for gas about 5 months after we got to nz even tough i had payed my bill and sold the house. thik that ones sorted now but keeping my fingers crossed. And as for change of address whew 8 months on with some and still trying .
Cardy :cheers

[gil]

Gil, you've just reminded me, the hire car i had from Enterprise had a slow puncture and i also had to ring the AA. The nice man from the AA came and put on the spare only to find it was a 13 inch wheel when all my others were 14 inch wheels. Luckily this was the day before my car was due back so i got someone to look after my son and drove it back to Enterprise and dumped it on them. They obviously don't pay too much attention to the roadworthyness (is that a word?) of their cars. It certainly wasn't fun wobbling round all the corners between here and my local Enterprise centre.

I had to drive 60 miles on a spacesaver tyre when i had a puncture on a previous car and as you can't safely go on the motorway at that speed it took me a very long time to get home.

Did you pay by cheque for your hire car as refunds to credit cards are usually done straightaway?

Hope you get your money soon,

Olivia

Would you believe I paid by credit card and it's STILL taken this long! They couldn't refund it immediately (as they did with the overcharge they had made, forgot to mention that bit!) as it required an Accident Report form to go to Head Office :confused:

Anyway, fingers crossed!

Gil

[gil]

And as for change of address whew 8 months on with some and still trying .
Cardy :cheers

We've put all our redirections in place now, but have also been contacting organmisations when their stuff arrives, charities, shops, catalogues etc but it still keeps pouring in :(

Gil

[Hannah]

Marcia, I back up what you say about NTL. They are crazy!!!! For 3 yrs they chased me around the country at 3 different addresses with threats to send in the baillifs, take me to court, blah blah blah, over £25 i 'owed' them for having a cable TV system fitted. Problem is, i never had it fitted as we decided (after a 2 hour visit from a pushy salesman) not to go ahead. We had bill after bill, for the fitting of the TV system .... but then the bills got bigger as they kept on adding supposed line rental for the phone rental we didn't have. Every month we got a bill with 'no call charges' but rental adding up each month. I rang them time and time again and they told me it was a computer error.

Anyway, we finally had a date for the baillifs.....we waited indoors, really excited, as we planned to abduct the baillif and hold him hostage.....and then we could be on TV and get it sorted out!!!!!! Unfortunately he didn't turn up, we didn't become famous and eventually NTL gave up and wafted away.

Sad really - lots of hassle for nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you are an NTL customer....BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID!!!!!!!!!!!!

[craddweb]

A very similar experience here too! I too started the process well in advance of leaving as I had read here it could be a nightmare!

On a positive note, the times I have spoken to call-centres here, I've spent most of the time talking about emigrating, where we are now, where we've come from! You don't mind being on the phone for half an hour if it's chatting, rather than holding!

The first one was to set the electricity bill up here and was answered by a lady from Manchester who had been to Somerset many times as a child! Great!

So, it will only get better!

Good luck with all that holding.

Debbie