I’m making a change to my financial advisors, which sounds awfully posh and first-world, but actually, it’s not. One of the things I need to provide is proof of address (POA), and this is always something of a nightmare. Here’s why, and here are a couple of shots from yesterday morning to lighten the read.
Many places don’t accept a Post Office box number, which we have, and which shows up on our tax and accountancy forms, sometimes. At other times, my tax papers read something like: Collins James Richard Sarah, which clearly, is not my name, and my address is Symi, 85600. That’s it, and that’s not good enough for non-Greece based companies.
The phone bill is in Neil’s name, and in Greek, so that’s no good. Besides, the address on it is something like ‘At the House of Maria Someone, Symi,’ and that’s it.
The Electricity bill is in my name, but again, the address of the house is put down as the name of the owner/Symi, and many places expect you to have a house number, or at the least, a street name.
Bank accounts? Again, name, island, postcode, maybe with Horio added in for Alpha Bank, or ‘PO box 12’ which isn’t accepted, and anyway, it’s number 42 now (must change that). Obviously, the Greek organisations also write your address in Greek script, and the only saving grace there is that ΣΥΜΙ looks similar enough to SYMI.
I have another bank that’s not Greece based, but all statements are now paperless and the companies that want your POA don’t accept screenshots of your statement, so that’s a right royal pain in the assets.
Health and House Insurance? I was able to get Generali to put the house insurance bill in Neil’s name and using the address we have given ourselves, and that might be okay for a company I have been with a while, but if I am switching, the new advice company may want something more than a house insurance bill. Ditto the health insurance, except that says my name, T.Θ. 12, Symi, 85600 – which is not accepted by non-Greek companies.
I usually use my pension statements which come as PDFs, but I can’t in this case, because they are who the new advisory company will be dealing with, so they can’t accept that.
Anyway, that’s today’s struggle. That and trying to find out why to renew a British passport from here comes out at nearly £300 when it should only be around £100. I think someone has pressed the wrong button somewhere. Oh, and if I am to rescue the godson’s latest modelling project, I need to find out how to get dried black acrylic water-based paint off a white plastic car kit without affecting the plastic.
