₦airaland Forum

Mamatukwas:
Good morning oh. So Virgin our Internet provider recently has been taking the piss and we want to port.

What are you guys using that is affordable and efficient? Internet only, no add ons?

What you can get depends on the area.
Virgin charges a premium because of their fibre .
If any other Openreach-associated providers in your area offer full fibre, then check what packages they have to offer, depending on what you need.
I use BT because its service here is sufficient for the occasional Teams meetings and Netflix/Amazon with no buffering. We've moved to office twice a week, so I can live with that.

Joshtoch:
Good morning everyone. I have been a silent reader. Please I'm a bit confused. My husband came in to uk as a sponsored worker. His boss has his clients far away from the office and wants all his staff to have a car. If you can't afford he gives you a loan which will be deducted only for a few months. Now, people are rushing to buy a car they don't like because you must not exceed a particular amount the boss gave on loan. Also, if you don't have a car you will not be giving a shift. I am helpless because I don't know where we can decide to get an accommodation since he hasn't been given any job until he buys a car. Also I can't work because his work plan is not settled yet. Waking up and not knowing what to do every morning. Please house what can we do in this case?

You can look for a zero hours flexitime job. Something like the Royal Mail/NHS Professionals bank kind of thing where you are not bound to work at specific times and book shifts you want which fit your availability (maybe night/twilight shifts in your case, if you have children).

Second, if your husband is going to be doing domiciliary care, obviously housing location doesn't really matter because the clients could be anywhere. Roll the dice and look for a house anywhere, preferably as central (or not too out of the way) in your city as you can get in this harsh rental market (for your own future commuting). For example, think somewhere central like Maryland, Gbagada or Surulere in Lagos.

Regarding a car, it's entirely up to you what you buy. Fireworks were thrown about quite a few pages back regarding the desirability or not of buying a cheap old banger as a new arrival - you decide what you want to buy, you can either buy something within the loan amount or nothing stops you from adding money on top of the loan amount to buy a preferably better car than what the loan amount could fetch. It's your call.

Lexusgs430:
Different times, same challenges.......... Some of us arrived Heathrow airport, with only £5 in our back pockets....... With determination to survive & strive.......

We're still standing..........

Obviously you didn't live in Lagos, given the confidence you had in carrying around money in your back pocket.

Lexusgs430:
Indeed...... We all started from renting one room only @ £25 per week ........

But had wider plans/goals............

The message was intended to ginger our people, to start planning and start saving towards that plan ............

Don't eat with all your fingers or send all your money to Nigeria, to rescue people that would use that money to eat peppersoup and carry okpomiliki's .......

Very good advice, all of it.
Not all easy to follow for the current set of incomers.
Many of them transported themselves to the UK as a family already, the vast majority as students who paid out hefty sums of life savings as fees to study often pointless courses, with 2 or more children to cater for, themselves already ageing and having to hustle round the clock in cost-of-living crisis UK to keep their heads above water and seek to establish themselves, pay their considerable tithes to the Home Office, etc., etc.

Far cry from the time when £25 per week was a doable thing for a young man/couple starting off and able to plan step by step.

[quote author=Bigfolk post=113323294][/quote]Tenancy dispute ADR process is free, no worries on that score. Cleaning is one of the most disputed issues post-tenancy, and I advised my sister and a friend who have just moved to simply pay for a cleaning company to do it (approx. 200 in each case for both of them) and avoid that potentially long and time-consuming argument, which worked for them. For me, a tenancy security deposit is also "dead money", as our friend Lexus charmingly puts it, and I write it off the moment I pay it (I have children though), and assume that all or some of it will dematerialise. Regarding cleaning, far better to leave or pay something for that if there is no other point of dispute.

As someone else has pointed out, if you have a smart meter installed, then shift the onus to EDF to justify why they charged you so much for just 11 days. But note that a direct debit simply provides a fixed amount from yourself every month, you might actually have consumed more (usually during the winter) or less (usually during the warmer months) energy than the figure taken every month. So you should check your EDF account for records of your consumption set off against your monthly direct debit for the time prior to when the smart meter was fitted.

Lexusgs430:
Welcome to the UK housing market...........

Did you take pictures/videos on arrival and departure......

Lodge an appeal with the tenancy deposit scheme........

Was meter readings taken, during your occupancy...........

Did you send a final meter + readings on meter, on arrival & departure...........

You see say, no be small matter for tenants..........

RENT MONEY IS DEAD MONEY + ADDITIONAL LANDLORD STRESS + RIPOFF.........

NB: I can see this is possibly your first post on this thread........ If only you had faramo us, all this UK living life skills, would have been your Bible .........

Not everyone has the means and opportunity to purchase property, no matter how attractive transmogrifying into a homeowner may be.

Lexusgs430:
If you don't think you would want to renew your tenancy agreement, send the LL a letter before action.....

Don't call him, don't have a verbal conversation, but a proper old school letter........

He would act within 24 hours ..........

Section 21 loading.
These days, in England at least, all the power is on the landlord's side, with the sheer number of human beings seeking accommodation these days. Yesterday, Home Office announced they have allowed in 1 m people in 2021 alone, students, Tier 2, refugees, all join. All of those competing for the not too large number of houses whose owners are OK with renting to Africans and Asians in the first place.

Anyone considering doing stronghead for their landlord should make sure they have a backup first. Otherwise, it's advisable to speak softly and make your points firmly but politely.

IamE:
Morning all.

My landlord is behaving like an igbo man though pakistani.
It's been 3wks since we moved into this 3bed rm @750pcm minus bills.
The landlord aquirred the property barely 1month before letting out. .
Initially he didn't want to deal directly with us so he handed the key to the property to one 9ja man who gave us the place and stood for us due to credit check ish.
During our 3wks of stay it's been from one fault finding to another. It was obvious that the Paki rented the house as soon as he bought it.
We always call the 9ja man to complain but at a point I felt I was giving the man stress and the moment I got the phone contact of the landlord it's been a case of direct calls to him.

My wife and I walked straight to his door (he lives 4 houses away from ours) and told him some friendly words in 9ja tone. I further mentioned to him that I work at the council and can report him to housing dept if he continues with these stunt.
Omo, paki has been up and doing since then o.
Bought new boiler and installed.

Try and reduce the racial slurs you use.

Healhtyliving:
If the child is born in the UK why do you wanna put in an application for them? Except if you plan to take the child out of UK during your settlement period, they are eligible for British passport once one of the parents gets ILR

Being born in the UK gives the child exactly the same status as its parents have now - they are still visa-dependent foreign nationals just like their parents, and are still liable to pay the IHS for treatment and visa fees subsequently for visas in line with their parents' status.

The potential to acquire UK citizenship is still far.

Ibk2020:
Option 1: change the dollars to Naira in black market and buy pounds in black market

Option 2: load the dollar in a dorm account and come to the UK with the card.

Pls which is best?

The first one.
There are always conversion charges when you spend money from your Nigerian USD account.

Viruses:
I thought the longer you stay in a place like UK, the more civilised you become

Obviously you haven't been to Peckham, Hackney or just about anywhere in Birmingstan to see masses of people living in their natural, pre-migration condition.

"Civilisation" is relative.

Solumtoya:
You can't. You can open Monzo and deposit £1,000. Better still, give it to someone you trust with a traditional Bank account to deposit and transfer to you.

This might be done innocently, but the bank could determine it fits the money mule pattern, so anyone considering this should bear that in mind.

Missposh:
Please is the amex card approval immediately, or do I have to wait a while before they let me know if I'm approved or not?

All credit card applications are instant, once you apply online, the computer will quickly answer yes or no.

DeeOneBangin:
Everybody knows HMRC will collect every dime owed to the last penny, nobody is disputing that. But the fact remains that I didn’t get taxed till about 5-6 months (only NI deduction was reflected on payslip, income tax was always 0.00) and I know a couple of newly arrived that this has happened to. How that happened, I don’t know.

And instead of someone just completely knocking off erico2k2 which I feel he is correct because it kinda applied to me.

And las las I got a letter saying i owed £138

As icon8 pointed out, you basically withheld this part from your tori.
Again, if you are earning 2k p.c.m as you say, there's no way 5 - 6 months unpaid PAYE tax will be 138 pounds.
Better hold fire on any spending plans first, HMRC fit still dey come.

icon8:
Hahaha ;. Louder, please!

I’ve been chasing them for my own gbese since the end of the tax year, before they will send my bill after I don chop the money clean mouth, and put me for trouble. I will ring them again today to ask them how much I’m owing, then I’ll issue a banker’s cheque.

Take off like 3 hours from work before you do so.
HMRC and Nigerian High Commission are now almost the same thing.

icon8:
Oga HR, you get time sir. It’s the confidence for me

My brother, in my experience HMRC dey like piranha fish, their money no dey fall for ground, not for where formal employees dey. Na the self-employed wey fit get up to tricks, but not employees. They will BR or D0 you sharply without wasting time.

DeeOneBangin:
Someone gave a clear explanation and you just knocked it off by saying he is wrong.

To dey drop opinion for nairaland sef don dey fear person. Public forum oooooh!!!

FYI, I didn’t get taxed until after about 5-6 months in the uk and I was earning like 2k monthly. My only deduction was NI.

NI is also a tax. In theory its supposed to be an earmarked tax for social security purposes (pensions, unemployment benefits, etc), but it's not, it goes into general taxation.

If you had no PAYE income tax deduction made for 5 - 6 months while earning above 12,570 p.a., there was probably an error somewhere, I would say (very unusual though). All new employees are tax coded when payrolled upon commencement of employment. That's what the starter checklist/P45 is for.

The point I think people are trying to make is that there is no statutory exemption from taxation for anyone when you get a new job, you must be put on the records as either not being taxed (NT) for whatever reason, standard 1257L, M, or whatever or basic rated (BR), or something.

jadepinkett:
Hi. Does anyone have any idea of the interest free period on Amex? I think some banks give up to 3 months to clear up your credit before tacking on interest.
Is this applicable to Amex?

Interest-free periods vary.
Some card issuers offer up to 2 1/2 years interest free.
There are also balance transfer cards, through which you can transfer accumulated debt from one card to another, some of which also offer long interest-free periods.

In theory, you could buy an item on a credit card (for instance brand new PCs, phones or the proverbial Nairaland student's car in the region of £1k, using a money transfer card) and not pay a penny in interest other than the minimum monthly payment/money transfer fee on that debt for up to 3 1/2 years if you really wanted to.

As has been previously pointed out, all credit is debt, so ......

Lexusgs430:
If coutts offers £200 nko .........

Bankers to HMQ

hustla:
Chief

What if someone takes like 10K from a CC and leaves the country. What will the Cc coy do?

Do they factor this into their risk analysis before approving the individual or how do they then make profit?

their insurance will pay.
All sorts of insurance in this country, rent insurance for landlords, mortgage protection insurance for borrowers, credit risk insurance, loss of income insurance, porn stars insure their assets, and so forth.
credit card companies make money from retailers, merchants, i.e. the places where you use your credit card to buy things.
so even if you pay off your balance in full every month and never pay a penny to them in interest, they still make money in settlement fees as long as you use the card.

Reason why Amex is not very popular with merchants - their fees are higher than Mastercard and Visa (and maybe that's why they are freer with dashing people credit limits). Visa and Amazon fought over settlement fees this year, and eventually settled.

Widall:
Hi guys...so I'm trying to open a UK bank account.

Pls can anyone confirm which of the banks is the best in all regards...I have got Barclays, Lloyd, NatWest, HSBC all very close to my house.

They're all the same.
Roll the dice.

iboboyswag:
Then I disagree. The Igbo traditional marriage grants immense privileges to the woman. Oriaku no be guy name.

Speaking seriously, I'd like to know what those immense privileges are? I have an "Odoziaku" in my house (both my mother and my wife are Igbo), so make I learn. If there is fine print in the traditional marriage contract that I didn't see, I fit change lane.

As far as I am aware, in most Nigerian cultures, marriage worked this way - a man undertakes some form of transaction for a woman, takes her back to his own family/village/land, where she becomes a wife and mother, producing children who most cultures then regarded as "belonging" to the man/his family (based on the seed garden principle, a man sowing his seed into a woman, the only part of sexual reproduction perceptible to the ancients).

Apart from a right to be supported by her husband, which these days is not really worthwhile if one could support oneself prior to the marriage anyway, I don't see any privileges, immense or otherwise, on the woman's part. Of course it wasn't slavery, as women could exit the arrangement and return to their "father's house", but I do fail to see any specific advantages there.

For European cultures, in those days when a man married a woman, he became her master of sorts, taking over control of all her assets and property, if any (changing of surnames was part of this), and also assuming a duty to care and provide for her. (A dowry is different from a bride price as we know it - a dowry is the money/property given to a woman by her family when she gets married, while the bride price is the opposite). That changed, and of course, dowries have long since died out in oyibo culture, but the concept survives to an extent in alimony, which was originally based on the fact that a man was assumed to have an obligation to support his wife, even after divorce.

Marriage has always been an arrangement (let's get together and have children or licensed sex, or to get support, the oyibo man invented so-called love to give basic sexual attraction/lust a nicer name), but customary marriage as is did confer more advantages on the man than the woman (not always enforceable these days), except perhaps in places like Abriba where the culture is matrilineal.

Lexusgs430:
Let's get rid of the culture, charging excessive bride prices.......

₦1000 or less, should be a maximum bride price........ I paid ₦200 bride price (which was fully refunded)......

My father in law was very careful to say "We don't sell our daughters here".
He told me "Put your hand in your pocket and bring out whatever amount you want".
Like I said, its tokenism in some cases, but the symbolism of the transaction still remains - even if its the so-called statutory ₦60.

Viruses:
Why would you bother yourself with the thought of legal protection before marriage?
You dey budget for bad thing for your salary?

Why wouldn't you?
Marriages are not made in heaven, they break down all the time.
Speaking of marriages and pensions in the same breath - pension entitlements are also divided up with the wife in the event of divorce too. Nothing wey Ali's Money no dey reach.

Lexusgs430:
It's not your intention, but every marriage/relationship is a gamble...........

You don't think it's a bad thing, to stop working........ Let's ask buhari & his geriatric colleagues........

Lol - Nigeria's gerontology unit is working overtime with the number of patients it has on the loose in government.

Lexusgs430:
Which reasonable thinking woman, would rather go traditional, and ignore legal protection..........

Traditional wedding, is simply a sexist arrangement........

I agree, but the same women who talk about being independent would rather die than not have a "trado wedding", disregarding the sexist implications of the ceremony in most cultures - one man comes and basically pays a [sometimes tokenistic, sometimes not] sum of money/hands over valuable consideration to another group of men [who impliedly "own" her], and carries off the woman. I think feminists should turn their attention to those aspects of the ceremony and advocate for abandoning it and going through with only one form - which apparently recognises the equality of the parties.

Lexusgs430:
So is traditional wedding, a legal union........

Yes, it is.
The law recognises it, and it is supposed to be dealt with in customary courts, which are more of a mess than the ordinary courts are, because the judges there are supposed to find out and agree on the customary rules to apply, which can be iffy.

I said its a messy grey area because a) you can lawfully marry more than one wife for instance, as long as you don't take her near any marriage registry or licensed place of worship to formalise that; b) all children born of those marriages are legitimate and all have an equal right to declare war and come and fight when their baba dies, and c) divorce is still largely unregistered, when you wan go, you return the madam, settle matters among the families, remove her from your NOK, change gear and enter another lane, which is generally accepted, even though I think in theory paperwork is supposed to be provided.

mex551:
pardon my ignorance, abeg which one again is Jury Service for this uk?

The same thing that happens on TV, they select names randomly from the voters register and summon you to come and hear tori in court about a matter then decide who gets to go to jail/pay damages or not.

canadaishome:
Guys, please has anyone ever gotten a jury citation?

My wife was selected for jury service

Does anyone have experience with this?

The letter says if she doesn't turn up, a fine of £1000 awaits

Lol, dont panic.

What I do know is this - If your wife is working, she will get her pay reimbursed by the government for the days she has to go to court, and her employer cannot sack her for that. There is a form the employer has to fill (more work for HR) if they wont pay her (at least here in England, check to see if its the same where you are), and she will claim back from the government.

specialenvoy:
Thanks, I have requested the voucher, but they didn't attach any value. How can I know the value?

The voucher should indicate the amount of the money you have available on it.
I have a BA evoucher for a cancelled flight and it clearly states the amount paid which I can use for a fresh booking.
Check the email they sent you again.

specialenvoy:
If I cancel one leg of a ticket on BA, like how much will they refund as vouchers?

Or is there any way I can leave the ticket open and pick a new date later without any penalty charges for missing the flight?

Anyone with such experience should please assist. Thank you

If you've already bought the ticket, and you want to change the date of one leg of the trip, you can do that from the website, it should give you options as to how much the change will cost.

If you want to omit that leg altogether, your only option is to cancel the whole trip, collect a voucher and buy another ticket omitting the part you don't want.

mizGene:
Traditional wedding is a legal union I believe, it is recognised by law. And the man has not yet committed bigamy until he marries the other lady in court or church, I stand to be corrected.

But the customary marriage is a strange concept unlike the statutory marriage when it comes to ending it - most people usually don't bother to go through a customary court process (which is what Nigerian law states if I remember clearly) when it comes to dissolving it, they just end it by their own tradition (returning bride price or gifts, etc), and move on from there.

Basically the principle roughly boils down to if you got married by carrying wine to collect your wife, you divorce by collecting back your wine and returning the lady (apologies to feminists).