Comments on: Notes to self

By: Catch 22 | Boldly Open

Catch 22 | Boldly Open — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:13:29 +0000

[...] Blog « Notes to self [...]

By: Robert Milic

Robert Milic — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:46:03 +0000

Gianugo, Adrian, I can’t recommend waiting for the utilities to be sorted. I just moved out of a house I lived in for 6 months without having paid any utility bills and now they’re trying to reconstruct how much I owe. Essentially I’ve been living there for 6 months without knowing how much extra expenses I’m looking at :S
Anyway, what I really wanted to write: should you ever have trouble with BT and be caught waiting in the queue for hours, I was able to get a very swift response from them by writing to ben.verwaayen at bt dot com (the CEO of BT).

By: Adrian Sutton

Adrian Sutton — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:47:36 +0000

You’re more than welcome. I forgot to mention as well that you need to call the local council yourself and set up an account to pay council tax and you need to get your own TV license.

By: Gianugo

Gianugo — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:13:20 +0000

Adrian, thanks a ton. Looking forward to you getting back for a huge payback in food and beverages!

By: Adrian Sutton

Adrian Sutton — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:09:24 +0000

Utilities generally sort themselves out - it’s in the land lords interest to change the accounts over to you and you wind up getting a bill from them anywhere from 1 to 3 months later. To find out who the bill is going to be from you’ll probably have to ask your land lord but I find it more fun to wait and see. That said, I may get home to find the gas, power and water cut off so we’ll see….

As for the bank account, go in with a letter from your employer (UK company preferably), your fixed term tenancy agreement, your passport and as many other forms of identification as you can manage. One tip I picked up too late is to open an account with an international bank in your home country and then ask them to transfer it over to the UK for you. HSBC and Citibank were the two options I could see in Australia.