January 2003, and here's a story about good old English know-how.
So, today I thought I'd have another crack at getting a National Insurance number. (They act as both a tax number and a social security entitlements number; even though I'm already paying tax and aren't eligible for social security payments, I still need a NI number.)
After about half an hour fluffing around, I find on the Inland Revenue website a phone number for the "National Insurance Contributions Registration Helpline". (Frustrating dead ends en route: Inland Revenue's "National Insurance Services to Individuals" web page has nothing about actually paying or getting a number, and no contact details; the Department of Something and Pensions have a pamphlet called something like "How to apply for an NI number" which tells you all about proving your ID but not who to contact.)
Great! -- I want help registering to pay proper National Insurance contributions, so who better than the National Insurance Contributions Registration Helpline?
I phone. They don't answer.
I phone the other number (other number? They can't have two phones hanging off one number like everyone else?). A nice woman asks for my postcode, then tells me to phone the Department of Whatever and Pensions. Hang about: the helpline tells me to ask someone else. Fair enough, if this was the Chestnut Marketing Board Helpline -- but if the National Insurance Contributions Registration Helpline can't help me register for National Insurance contributions what on earth can they do? I've been trying to think of a question I could ask them that they could in fact have answered, and I can't think of a single thing.
Ok, so phone the Department of Wossname and Pensions on their main enquiries line. Which isn't, of course, a tollfree number, so I'm running up a huge bill as I sit and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. And give up in disgust, swallow the urge to shout an obscenity, and hang up. Still no National Insurance number for Pauly.
In the best of all possible worlds, modulo systematic British incompetence, the rest of the game goes like this so far as I can tell: I phone the main line, they give me a local office's number, I phone them, they make an appointment, I queue, I fill out forms, they sit on them for a month or more then grudgingly give me a number, I fill strangely unsatisfied depite my accomplishment. But I've already been warned that the filling-out-forms bit is made ridiculous: one friend who's done it recently tells me they asked him to fill in one form "in your own words", collected the form, ignored it, and filled out another copy themselves. And you can bet they'll want something from me which I can't give them: a National Insurance number, for example.
I've not even asked about bank accounts since December, when I had the following exchange with some idiot at HSBC:
THEM: Where are you from?
ME: New Zealand.
THEM: Ok, so we'll also need your Australian driver's licence.
ME: *stunned silence*
ME: *more stunned silence*
ME: *more stunned silence*
No wonder they lost the Empire. Best to ignore that, I figured:
ME: I don't have a driver's licence.
THEM: But we need proof of your address in New Zealand.
ME: I don't have an address in New Zealand. I lived in Australia most recently...
THEM: Proof of your address in Australia, then.
ME: ...but I don't have an address there any more either.
THEM: Oh. Well, we need proof of your last address if you've been at your current one less than six months.
Then I figured it out.
ME: Ah, well, I think I've been at my current address for six months. Do you need proof of how long I've been there?
THEM: Oh, no, that's fine.
It's a good thing I wasn't carrying my pocket knife that day, I can tell you.
On the bright side, I made a snowman today.
(Postscript, February 2003: I did finally manage to get an appointment for an interview for a number, after something like fifteen calls to the same office. They said they couldn't give me a time over the phone, but that they'd send me a letter with the details. The letter, when it arrived about a month later, cheerfully informed me that if I didn't show up to my appointment they'd throw out my file and I'd have to start all over again. It arrived -- and you know what's coming here don't you? -- the day after my appointment.)
Another round, in April and May 2003. I wanted to do two things: get a national insurance number (still), and change my account from the somewhat-dodgy-dealing HSBC to the somewhat-cleaner Co-operative Bank.
First things first; the national insurance number. Now that I've moved house, I need to go to a different office; I've been told off in the past for phoning the wrong people. So I phone the local office of the Department of Work and Pensions, on the number the nice directory enquiries people gave me. (An aside about directory enquiries: at the time of writing, the UK is getting rid of its single directory enquiries number in favour of a raft of separate, privately-run, services. All of which, of course, have different numbers. So how am I supposed to get the number of any of the new directory services in the first place, I wonder?)
It rings out every time I try it, which is often.
Ok, maybe there's another number in the phone book. I look: there's nothing under "Work and Pensions", or under "National Insurance", or even under "Department for Work and Pensions". Under "Inland Revenue" -- a completely different part of the civil service, you'll note -- there's a number for "National Insurance Enquiries". I phone it.
"This number is no longer in use. Please phone ..."
Hang on -- they can afford to put an answerphone there but not to just divert the calls?
Ok, so I phone the new number. Someone answers remarkably quickly -- this means it only took a day's trying -- and tells me I need to talk to the Department of Work and Pensions. I whimper a little. They give me another number.
The new number doesn't exist. Not even a ringing tone. I'm not sure where I go from here.
Second things second: changing my bank account. I don't like the fat-cat deals HSBC awards its directors, and I really don't like the dodgy investments they seem to enjoy, so I phone the Co-operative Bank and tell them I'd like to transfer my account. They fall over themselves to help, and once their computer works again (sigh) send me out all the forms.
One of the forms asks for proof of address: either a utility bill, or a driver's licence, or a benefits book. Now the utilities are in my flatmate's name, I don't drive and wouldn't want a UK licence if I did, and I don't get any benefits. For a start, benefits are given out by the Department for Work and Pensions, and we all know what that means. (Why wouldn't I want a UK licence? I'm told that getting one is trivial, if you already have something equivalent, but you have to give up any others while you have the UK one. And really, what would the odds be of a government department in this country being able to find my licence again when it came time to switch back?)
So I phone the Co-op back and ask what else they'll accept. The only thing I could possibly get to satisfy them, it seems, is a letter from my GP. Apparently I have to go to the doctor to get a bank account.
The mind boggles.
May 2003, and yet more: I want to fill out a tax return, since I think I paid too much income tax last year. After speaking to five (five!) people at my local branch of Inland Revenue -- well, I say "local" but it's forty-five minutes away by bus -- it becomes clear that noone there actually knows how I can get a form. You what? What the hell do the Revenue do if not collect tax?
I have a cup of tea to calm down and turn to the web. Remarkably, the very first thing I see on the Inland Revenue's site is an invitation to fill in a tax return online. Hurrah! But first I must register so they know who I am. Okey dokey. Which means I have to fill out a form on the web, and then wait for them to process it, and then wait for them to -- oh Lord -- post me a password. In the mail. On paper, and in an envelope, and everything. What the hell is the point of a web service if you have to wait for the post before you can use it?
The mind boggles.
Of course, it's still not that simple or I'd have my tax back by now. To get a registration to get to the web site to get a tax return I need to know three things: my post code, my tax reference number (printed, they say cheerfully, on my tax return), and my National Insurance number. I could almost cry, you know. Meanwhile, I got a cheerful letter in the mail, from Inland Revenue, asking me whether I knew what my National Insurance number was and could I please tell them. Oooh, I, but, you, oooh.