UK Relocation

Tech Thursday: VOIP To Replace Our US Mobile Numbers

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I wrote this months ago and haven’t gotten around to posting it.  I have a few more tech move discussions I would like to get to.  Hope to make time to write them.

As part of our planning to move to London we had to figure out how we were going to keep in touch with people in the States. That meant what level of the presence we were keeping in the United States while we were gone.

We didn’t have a home phone number that we shared with anyone so keeping that wasn’t an issue. It was really just for our intercom in our apartment. Once we moved we were able to grid it.

M and I used our mobile numbers for texting and calls so we wanted to keep them. We were going to push as many people to use Apple Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and similar apps however for those that do not have access to (or know how to use) those systems we wanted our old US mobiles.

M’s use case was really to keep her number only in case people wanted to call. For me I also wanted to be able to keep the accounts open that require a mobile phone for verification.

I spent a lot of time researching what the cheapest most reliable option for us to use to simply keep in touch with everyone in cases they do not have

For the simply keeping in touch with people after we leave I did a lot of research and ended up with a voice over IP service I’ve been using for years. I simply took both of our mobile numbers and ported them over to VOIP.MS. our quasi-home phone was a DID on the service for years. I also had other numbers for various things on the service. Sending and receiving calls have been pretty seamless over the years. Their price is also super cheap since you can get a pay-as-you-go plan. Each number is about one dollar per month plus usage.

The porting process to VOIP.MS took a few weeks. That is the porting system’s issue not theirs.  Other than how long it took the process was seamless for both numbers. I ported mine over in December right before we left. I kept using my work mobile during the few days there was a gap when my service ended and the number moved to VOIP.MS. for M since she did not have a work phone we ported her number in January. The hardest part about this whole process was porting her number since T-Mobile made us jump through hoops to unlock the number for porting. Even though we had paid off her iPhone a year ago they still kept phone locks and we didn’t figure that out until after we ported the number away from T-Mobile and tried to use a local Sim card in the UK.

The only challenging part of staying in touch using these US numbers is texting.  People that have iPhones can keep texting us if they know our email addresses.  Anyone who only had our number or use Android would have that message turned into an email now.  We don’t really see them so basically texting to those old numbers are useless. So basically we can receive phone calls. It’s been a minor annoyance every once in a while when someone tries to contact me hasn’t updated my contact details that I sent out listing my local number. For me that hasn’t been a major issue. For M I don’t think it has been a problem at all or she’s just not realizing people are trying to get her.

Slightly more complicated a problem is having a number that receives SMS short codes. This is required for services like Google or your bank to send you verification codes. What I learned is most voice over IP providers do not support them very well. After a lot of research I found one company Line2 who supported them. They published a list of all the codes they know to be working okay into their system. They also said they would work with you if you had a problem with another provider that’s not listed. A brief search of their list showed me that they covered most if not all of the companies that I would receive SMS’s from. Unlike VOIP.MS they are not cheap. One line costs $10 a month. With that plan however I did get unlimited calls and texts. Not that I use it. It feels expensive however in the end it was cheaper than buying the cheapest mobile phone plan and simply not use it except for verifications.

I kept two numbers for me. One for personal communication and one for the SMS short code verifications. That was deliberate. VOIP.MS is very flexible in how I can route calls so I keep my personal number with them. The client I use will allow me to do call recording, change my caller id, route to different places with a lot of granular control.  Line 2 the provider I use for SMS short codes only lets you use their client or a basic call forwarding.

Overall i am very pleased with both serviced. Line2 is relitivly expensive however it was cheaper than some other service providers i looked at. Their recievibg SMS Short codde options also seems better than most other solutions out there. i would (and have) reconend either provisers to anyone looking.

So You Want To Move To Another Country Part Whatever: You Need Credit

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I have generally been pretty good with my credit. I pay all my balances off every month and my US credit has been excelent for years.

I knew when coming to the UK that my credit doesn’t carry over. I also learned that I might be in the lucky position to be using services from companies that would transfer my credit to their corresponding divisions in the UK.  That is a perk of working with a multi national organisation.

My usage of American Express cards is measured in decades. It makes me feel old. I also remember fondly that my dad thought it was amusing that I had an American Express Gold card in college. He gave me one on his account for any emergency purchases. Thinking about that, it might be its own post at some point. Needless to say after college an American Express card was one of the first cards I got. I was thankful to find out that American Express will issue me cards in the UK based off of my history with them in the US.

Process to get my American Express card in the UK was seamless. I filled out an online form and the cards arrived at our house in London. The cards were literally waiting for us when we got to our house. I cannot say enough nice things about the process from American Express to do this. In this situation membership does have its privileges. Pun intended. The only thing I would comment about my experience with American Express isn’t really a negative since I got something for free. I was going to downgrade one of my cards in the US however I got hard sold into not doing it. They basically gave it to me for free however it’s yet another conversation I  have to have with them later this year. I know they’re expecting me to forget and just pay for it. Be warned Annex I will not forget to call to downgrade that account.

The thing with American Express is even in the United States it’s not excepted everywhere. I heard mixed opinions from British friends on how widely accepted AMEX was. My experience is it is generally accepted the vast majority of the time we go to use it. Is it less widely accepted as in the states? I don’t know, maybe. Either way having it is your only card does limit you. Even in the US I would always have a backup just in case.

That leads me to trying to get a card from my bank. When it became pretty apparent we were going to move we opened an account with a multinational bank that was one of the few that have accommodations for people in my situation moving to new countries. I am writing about my experience in getting accounts created them in another post, so I won’t go into that here. I did sign up for a MasterCard in the United States specifically so I could build up credit history bank so I could transfer that history over to their UK division.

Once living in the UK I waited several months to apply for the credit card via my bank. I delayed partly because I wanted to see how far we can get with AMEX. I also was pretty lazy. I feel that all the forms to apply and then didn’t hear anything for several weeks. Then I get a letter saying I been declined. I was a little surprised. On one hand I do not keep very much money in the UK branch of this bank. I do my day-to-day banking with an online only bank. I didn’t think that would matter since I have a decent amount of funds in other locations with them. The way their whole system works is having funds at one location counts towards the other.

I was rather annoyed by being declined. I was also curious why. I called them to ask and got a bunch of runaround. Finally they filed an official appeal on my behalf. They told me that would be something like 6 to 8 weeks before they got back to me with an answer. Over a month later I got a letter telling me that three weeks after that they should have a response to me. When I finally got a written response all it said was I was declined and they couldn’t really say specifically why. But it may be one of many different factors. I get not having a lot of a credit history would prevent me from getting something from a service provider that I’ve never used before however these guys were supposed to be different. I should not be surprised since the general feedback about them in all of the expected some part of are negative.

So you want to move to another country Part 5: Finding a House Conundrum

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Most of the other things I’ve written about are completely possible or even required to be done out of the country. There is only so much you can do regarding finding a place to live without actually looking at houses. M is really fantastic at looking at online listings and narrowing down what she wants and what she thinks won’t work.  So basically she did all she could do remotely.

Even with M’s house investigation skills we realized early enough in the house finding process that we needed help. Based on a recommendation or two we settled on a relocation agent. Their job was to help us find a house to live in. We had several criteria. We wanted to be an area with a lot of green space. We also wanted a house with the backyard. This is something that M has wanted for a while and we promised our kids. One of the biggest priorities was proximity to good schools for the girls. We also wanted to be a reasonable commute will be located. And obviously we had a budget to stick with. With all that information in hand we let our relocation agents go to work. At the same time I had spoken to several friends from work who currently live in or around London. I also spoke to a friend of mine who is in New York who was relocated from London. After a lot of back and forth we suggested to the relocation agents that we felt our criteria would be met in a few specific neighborhoods.

After their research the relocation agent’s agreed with us. We then started focusing our efforts on the surrounding neighborhoods that we felt were a fit. The relocation agent sent several house examples to us. They were only examples since we learned that most property gets rented very quickly so we needed to see what was people out there however we would not have the specific listings we were going to see or possibly rent until right before we went to look.

Finding a house however does require some on the ground work. All of the research that M has done and all the work done by the relocation experts leads up to an on-site house viewings. The question became when could we go. We knew that when we started finding the right time to go was always a big question. Originally we were hoping to go in early October however childcare was a challenge. We also learned that to rent a house you need your visas done already. Our visas weren’t ready in October. We also learned that you have to view a house right around when you want to take it since they go quickly.

Early on in the planning my mom had said she would take the girls while we went to look for a house. The best week for her was the week of Thanksgiving. It only required hard to do the school routine two days and then go to my sisters the rest of the week until we got there. That gave us the entire weekend before and four days, Monday through Thursday to do what we needed to do. The relocation people said that the timeframe could work since property would be available for viewing then that we could rent in December. We preferred to rent for January however this was the only time we could go.

Other things we figured out was that you cannot get into a school right away so having a property rented and then starting the process to get the school sorted in December was appealing. The overlap in cost with our apartment in New York was frustrating however one month wasn’t the end of the world if it got us what we wanted.

With our dates settled we booked travel. We waited a bit too long and tickets were going to be pretty expensive for airfare. Then we had the idea to use reward tickets. We each had enough points for round trip ticket and there was availability the days we wanted to travel. The only challenge we had was we had award points on different airlines. We ended up booking the tickets and flew separately. Going out to London our flights were only about 30 minutes apart. Coming back however it was about 2 1/2 hours.

Due to delays M only arrived about 15 minutes before I did and waited for me and read a book right past customs. We were able to ride together to the hotel.

The way the schedule worked while we were in London for our house visiting trip was we had Saturday to rest from our overnight flight to view the neighborhoods we were interested in. We also hoped to find any last-minute houses that we wanted to view on our own. We walked around the high streets of two neighborhoods. We also spoke to one realtor and lined up two houses to view on Monday.

We were only able to view one house Monday since the other one we could get into. The house was lovely however it was right adjacent to the train and we were concerned about that. I thought I would be more concerned about that then it turned out to be however the bigger issue with the house was its distance to the train. It was three quarters of a mile walk. Without a car the girls would have issue doing that anytime we wanted to go anywhere.

Monday night we met up with a friend of mine from work who lives in the neighborhood we were looking at. By Monday afternoon the relocation agents had emailed us the itinerary for our marathon viewing sessions on Tuesday. We were originally going to try to do some houses Tuesday and some houses Wednesday however the schedule worked out that it was all done on Tuesday. Fun fact we learned that house viewing in England is best done on a Saturday or weekdays that are not Monday. Apparently Monday is when they reconcile offers made from weekend viewings.

With our list of houses we reviewed them with my friend at a pub by the office. We got the lowdown on the streets where the houses we wanted to see were. Based off of that and the details from the relocation agents there were no matter what and some that we were really excited to see.

On Tuesday the first house we saw was a disaster, literally. There was what could only be described as a hole in the floor of the kitchen. There were some sort of water damage that had been addressed yet and the entire kitchen was buckled floor. It was a good start of the day. The next few houses were okay but nothing spectacular.

Before lunch we viewed one house that was M’s stand out favorite. The street was nice, the backyard was nice and it was pretty spacious. What we learned was even though we only need three bedrooms the houses we viewed you really needed a 4th bedroom. The reason for that was the last bedroom be it the third or fourth was always super small. We could have survived on three bedrooms however my dream of a home office in a guestroom would’ve been dashed. The rooms were just too small to hold more than a desk or more than a single bed. The single bed even wouldn’t have been enough since we want guests to come and that means usually more than one person at a time. Apparently this size room is typical in prewar houses.

After lunch we saw another house or two we liked. One house with really good location to a fantastic school was just horrible. The last house we saw as M said had terrible curb appeal. It was off of the main Street was a little bit further of a walk than what we liked however it was doable. The thing with that house was once you are inside it was fantastic. There was a pretty open floor plan first floor. The living room was pretty big and there was an eating kitchen. The backyard was huge. So large to the point we could not see the end of it due to the way it was laid out. I wasn’t a fan of the bedroom configuration but it was okay enough.

In the end the decision boiled down to two houses. One was a big four-bedroom with a huge backyard with a swing set. It had if I recall an eating kitchen and a garage with off street parking even had a dryer in the garage. That apparently is very rare for England. It hardly did not come with appliances however the previous tenant had left appliances we could use with no warranty if we wanted.

The other house was M’s favorite that was close to the train on a cute Street. It was a three bedroom that had the attic converted into a master bedroom with en suite bathroom. It did not have off street parking however you can get a permit so parking hopefully should be manageable since not just anyone can park.

We put an offer on the four-bedroom with the converted attic. The final straw was it had several school options that were good. The other house we light had really only one school option and if we didn’t get into it we would have to travel pretty far for in other school. One of the things we said we needed that the relocation agent suggested was a high density number of schools in case your first and second options don’t work out.

Since our original plan was to view houses Wednesday and we had an offer out we had a free day. We went to the Tate and Borough Market along with walking on the river for a while. It was generally restful day before we flew home on Thursday.

As of the time of this writing we have our house. We got the house we wanted and were pretty happy. The relocation agents have already started the process of getting our utilities and other things set up. There helping with things I didn’t realize they would help with. Well I guess I realized that since I did read the terms and conditions however you forget the details. I was getting overwhelmed with the things we need to do and there taking care of many of them.

By the time this blog post is published we should be already living in her house.