JAJ

A quick tip, if you do want to maintain UK bank and credit card accounts (usually a good idea), then make sure there's some occasional activity otherwise the bank may close it down on the basis of being 'dormant'.


Jeremy

MrsDagboy

Hi Laura, sorry I forgot about this thread . Yes the First Direct account was simply changed to the australian address, no real third degree about it, it was very straightforward. We keep ours open for an endowment & for birthdays etc.

As I said before, I think whether or not you get a CC is more to do with if you have a stable job & ties to the country rather than anything else. Alot of temp visa people seem to have no problem at all, but there are some who have had trouble like Polly. Ditto car loan - I remember jayr saying he had heaps of trouble getting one, whereas we had none.

My suggestion is if you do have a problem either try another bank or see if you can get your employer to vouch for you. I think Andrew63 did that & had everything from a car to a house sorted in 10 days .

If you really hit a brick wall, I guess you can just keep using your UK credit card as long as you dont mind tranferring money each month to pay for it :scared: .

Good luck .

DagBoy

That was my fault - I assumed the system would be like the UK, where the more cards and credit and debt opportunities you have been offered, the better your credit rating seems to be, so the more the bank will lend as a mortgage. Here they work on the assumption that as soon as you get the mortgage the first thing you will do is go out and max out every card you have. I think that is why the card limits here do not get pushed up automatically the more you use (and pay off) the card, unlike the UK where my limit was constantly being increased for me. By the time I left the UK I had three cards with about £20k limit on them.

I did think of getting the credit limit dropped down to £100 on each so I could declare them honestly for the mortgage then get them raised later, but there was really no good reason to keep them as I could get a credit card here with no problems.

I did apply for a UK credit card a few months ago as I though it would be useful to have one in sterling for our UK trip so as to avoid the currency conversion charges etc. and it would be easy to pay off from the money in my UK account. Unfortunately the processing of my application took slightly longer than we anticipated and the card did not arrive till about 6 weeks after we got home to Brisbane.


Cheers,

DagBoy

DagBoy

Well thankfully this problem was solved for me by the fact that it took us 18 months to sell my house in the UK and I had to pay the mortgage (£1000+) from my Aussie salary. That proved just a little hard, so my poor old TESSA and my other savings account had to be cashed in and used to make my payments until my evil witch of a neighbour wound her neck in for long enough for me to get a buyer. Still, looking on the bright side, I saved the £25 it would have cost me to transfer the money over here.

Cheers,

DagBoy

Ian12

If this sounds like an ad for First Direct I don't mind. I've been with them for many years and I kept my accounts with them when I left. I have a cheque account and a visa account. It is sometimes handy to be able to pay for things in the U.K. using the Visa card which I thn settle online. I can also pay bills (such as tax on our rental property in the UK) by BACS - again on line. The rent is also paid into the UK account and I can shift the funds over here as and when needed which I do through HIFX. No from for First Direct and none from HIFX either. I wish my experience of Australian banking was as good. It is also useful to have a record of all of these things for Australian tax purposes.

NickyC

Mrs DB's quite correct - when you sign the application form or accept the terms and conditions on an online application (which is an implied signature) you're affirming that you're telling the truth about your financial situation.

Credit providers here have a legal obligation not to advance credit to people who can't afford to repay it - they need to know all your current obligations so they can work out if you can afford any more. There's an officially sanctioned index where the minimum amounts to support married/single people with/without dependents are specified. If you don't have enough cash left over at the end of the month (allowing for the minimum amount to support yourself and your family) to repay the credit that they're about to give you - then legally you can't have it.

So if you did have difficulties making your repayments in the future, you can't blame the bank for your strife (and plenty of people have tried, believe me!) if it was found that you made false statements on the application.

Though, of course, normally there's no way that an Australian bank would know about any overseas credit cards.....

MrsDagboy

Thanx Nicky, thought that was the case. So basically it comes down to the honest people & the dishonest ones .........