Hi all,
I got a ton of info for our move from this site, so I just thought I'd come back and post our positive experiences. The situation is this: We, both US citizens, arrived in the UK on Monday, 12 Feb. with no permanent place to live. We'll be here two to three years.
We went almost immediately to HSBC and set up a Passport account (
http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/personal/current-accounts/passport?WT.mc_id=HBEU_TouchClarityHPc_Passport01_2006/09). Yes, it cost money and is very limited, but for two people with no UK credit history and no address, it will work fine. Quite a lot is done by direct debit here rather than cheques anyway. They also said that once we have a permanent address we can come back and change it to a better account with checking, etc. It probably helps that both my husband and I have work agreements that spell out salaries.
Also, prior to leaving the US, I set up an XETrade account. So, on Tuesday I initiated a wire-to-wire trade from my US bank to our brand new UK account. Now, stupidly, I didn't realize that if I sent the money by wire, I had to go to my bank and, well, wire money. So after I got the e-mail from XETrade saying, "we got your request, now go to your bank and wire us the money," I frantically wrote back and said I screwed up, can you please change this to an EFT-to-wire transaction. Within minutes I had an e-mail from customer service saying that they would take care of it and change the transaction. By Wednesday, the money had been withdrawn from our US account and by Friday it was sitting in our UK account. Brilliant! We now have money, in pounds, for a security deposit for a flat.
On the HSBC account, they did need some form of mailing address to send a debit card and then the PIN -- we used my husband's work address for that. All has gone well so far. Hope this is all useful info for someone!
KTinDC
