SkylarkR

Hi everyone, my husband has just accepted a job in Auckland and we are awaiting our selection from the next eoi pool.

We've been talking about moving to NZ for years so by no means a rash decision. We've researched well and just got back from a 3 week reccy trip.

I'm going through phases of excitement - omg this is really happening! To panic - omg this is really happening! Lol...!

Ive just come across the **** website and I need a bit of positivity. I don't expect everything in NZ to be wonderful, everywhere has its problems right? But this website is so full of negativity it's left me with some concerns...

What's the view of this website from British expats - is there truth in their stories or is it just written by negative people who didn't research before they moved?

TIA

SkylarkR

Not sure why **** was starred out? Wondering if that gives me some of my answer..?!

Pulaski

It may be some legal threat made against BE. A financial services firm with some very shady practices threated BE with a lawsuit and now if you try to posted its name it gets starred out.

Moses2013

What negativity do you mean? It's just normal that people have different opinions/views and just because little mix are in the charts doesn't mean it's my music taste LOL. As long as you've done your research and know what to expect, you'll be grand. Of course if you gave up a nice home and job in the UK, really miss family and friends and suddenly end up poorer in New Zealand you won't be jumping for joy but that can happen anywhere.

SkylarkR

Totally accept everyone has a different opinion, but it seems that the views on ***** are incredibly strong with a very negative bias.

I am expecting to be worse off in NZ - husband will be taking a pay cut, and I know about cost of living, house standards etc. I guess I was surprised at the barrage of reports/articles/blog posts etc posted that talk of crisis level stuff in NZ which is quite different to some of the research I have done.

A good example of this would be education. From my research, I believed that education standards in NZ are high (important as I have 2 v young boys). ***** talks about the immigration propaganda and how education isn't so great, kids don't make it to tertiary education and its all lies by the govt to get people over.. selling the NZ dream.

We have spent time in NZ, know people who live in various places in NZ so thought I had a fairly balanced view of what to expect.. this site has thrown me off balance so just asking what all your views are of it (if you have come across it)... is there something to it or is it just an outlet for those who aren't happy to moan?

Moses2013

Not in New Zealand myself now but if money is important to you and you know that you'll be finacially worse off, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to move, just like you probably wouldn't move to another part of the UK if that was the case. Maybe it's the scenery, bigger house, only you know your reasons?


Maybe because New Zealand is so far away and advertised as paradise, people seem more negative if it doesn't work out for them. If you move to Spain and it goes wrong, you can probably still afford a Ryanair flight, so don't have as much time to complain.

MrsFychan

please lets not discuss other sites and comments made on it. Thank you

Now down to the issue you seem to be worrying about.

my experience - if your child has been in UK education but is still under 13 then they may struggle with the way education is done in year 1-8. My daughter was 10 when we came over and hated it. She was bored. Managed to move her on a year early to college, year 9-13, which is more UK based - set lessons and more structured.
If not already had a couple of years in UK system should be fine as they will know no difference.

Buzzy--Bee

Being on holiday somewhere is nothing like living there at all. Nothing.

Please don't think that your experiences of being on holiday in NZ, where you are living on wages earned overseas, in holiday mode etc etc are going to be anything like living in NZ, where when you receive your first electricity bill you wonder if the decimal point is in the wrong place, when you go to the doctors you have to hand over $60 before they let you leave, when you go to the supermarket you check to see if the amount of money you are handing over is accidentally paying for the next shoppers groceries too.

Then you get your first pay slip and discover that even though you are earning half what you did in the UK, quite a bit of tax has been taken out as you are taxed from $1 in NZ.

You would not have experienced any of these on a holiday visit.

So be assured that any positivity or negativity on here is from people who are living in NZ and have a more accurate view.

SkylarkR

Wow - you are assuming a lot of things in your reply with your rude undertone. You assume I have not experienced these things? Wrong. Assume I've only had a 'holiday' visit? Wrong. You've intimated that I therefore ahouldnt question what I've read because they are written by NZ residents...? Why should I assume the contents of that site are genuine?

My question was about the validity of seemingly extreme bias views on a website. I'm not questioning the views of people who live in NZ but trying to understand if this site is just a known venting platform.

I understand the moderators don't want other sites talked about so perhaps one of the moderators can delete this post as I don't think
I'm going to get the answers to my question.

Jay30

I very much agree with your post, it seems an awful lot of people on here assume those of us making the move just woke up one morning and decide to move to NZ based on the pictures in a holiday brochure. It really is quite constantly patronising overall on here.

jmh

Maybe you can list the ones that worry you most.

If you look at education, what is good for one person is bad for another. NZ teachers who have worked in the UK say there is more 'teaching to the test'. If getting good test results is the result you want, then this is a good strategy. At the extreme, many Asian countries get consistently higher exam passes and grades, due mostly to rote learning and teaching to the test. If you want more general learning, e.g. learning how to problem solve, then many find the NZ system more suitable. That's not to say that NZ results are poor - you need to do your own research on where they compare to the UK. A good employee is one who can learn, show initiative and be creative - rote learning does not develop these skills.

I've noticed that when negative headlines are presented, in NZ or the UK, often when you look at the bigger picture and check the research the picture changes. Eg. people say they leave the UK because of the crime rate, but in fact crimes rates are similar. There is a bigger difference in crime between districts in the UK than between the UK and NZ. If crime is your issue, you might find it easier and cheaper to move to another part of the UK.

While it's good to get a personal opinion, check the claims with the data.

I sometimes see people criticise small-town NZ for being backwards - my own experience is that small towns any country are not as cosmopolitan as the cities. Funny that.

simonsi

Then I for one am puzzled, if you have truly lived here then I'm not sure why you need to validate or otherwise a particular websites views, surely you already have an accurate context to put them in?

I've normally found honest experiences and opinions on this site, good or bad but haven't any experience of whatever site was starred out.

simonsi

I'll just say the reality is different to the expectations, no matter how much research you do.

Have you moved between countries before then?

Mishclark

Hi OP,

I don't think Buzzy Bee is trying to be rude or insulting, just stating it how it is.

I was married to a Kiwi and am from Australia, I do like NZ and am planning on moving back there, but even over the ditch and having spent a lot of time there, many of the points Buzzy Bee and others have mentioned rang true for me as well..I thought Australia and Nz being so similar would make things easy, but hell no, it still was a culture shock! And all of the points made by Buzzy Bee as well.

All the time in the world spent there was nothing like trying to buy a house, buying groceries, earning money, getting my head around the schooling differences, bills and some shocks I wasn't used to at all....things were so laid back and she'll be right that even as an Aussie I was shocked!

It all worked out in the end, we ended up back in australia due to my husband needing cancer treatment that they didn't have funded in Nz and he still had a medicare card, so that was a big shock to our system as well..

I still like the place though.

Good luck with your move, I hope it all works out for the best and I'm sure it will.

Michelle

Mishclark

Oh, and I am not sure about that website, but I know of another one that doesn't exist anymore, that was circulating around the net around 6 or 7 years ago, and a lot of the people on there were genuine in their concerns, I knew of a person who was active on there and a lot of the people really were unhappy...it's just different experiences for different people.