We decided to go off and get cell phones for me and the kids. After all, we are in a different country, customs are different, streets are strange and I just wanted the kids to have the ability to get ahold of me whenever the situation warranted without having to look for a phone booth. Although, I will say there are a plethora of phone booths available in London, not like the US anymore. When was the last time you saw a working phone booth in the US? Probably longer than you think. Anyway, I digress. So off we go to the High Street where we have seen in the past few days quite a few cell phone company offices. Chizz wants to go to Carphone Warehouse because it is cheaper but I am a purest and would rather go right to the source. We walk into Orange, probably one of the bigger providers in the UK on the level of Cingular or Verizon in the US. After explaining our situation to the young gentleman who approached us, he grimaced a bit and then asked "How long have you been in the UK?" Chizz told him that he had been here about 9 months and we have been here just under a week. Another grimace AND a chin rub! "Wellllllll" he says drawing it out quite a bit, "You know we will need to do a credit check on you and I can tell you right now they usually don't approve anyone who hasn't been in the country 3 years, but if you want to come back with some more documentation, we can give it a try." THREE years!! Oh my goodness. Mind you the area we live in is a US slum, crawling with Americans, most of which have probably not been here 3 years. What kind of documentation will we need? "Your passport, a bank statement with your current address (where you should have been for at least 3 months), a utility bill if possible, a business card on with your title on it. Oh what did you say your title was?" Chizz being the humble guy he is, starts to say "Broker" Grimace, chin rub AND shaking of the head!!! I jump in - "Actually he is the Operations Director". He seems slightly relieved ,because heaven forbid they give one of their cell phones to just anyone, although he points out that usually they like the titles to be pretty high up like the owner or president or something like that. For a cell phone!! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention - Chizz is a duke, no wait an ARCHduke, with a prince on his mother's side. Yeah, that's the ticket. For a cell phone for goodness sake.
We went home, had some lunch and then regrouped. Bringing more documents than we needed for the visa to move to this country, we went to Carphone Warehouse. The manager was very nice. He explained they represented 4 or 5 different companies. He thought we might have trouble qualifying for some over others because we had been in the country for less than a year but he ran checks with several companies. T-Mobile turned us down flat. O2 would give us 1 phone line with a large deposit and Vodafone would give us 1 phone line with no deposit. Two phone lines when we really needed three. So the kids each got a phone with the phone companies and I am doing a pay as you go type of phone. Actually it is not a bad deal. Calls to the US are cheaper than calls to the kids in London. Weird. Hopefully when we have been here for 3 more months, I can get a phone with one of the companies the kids are signed up with.
Phone packages are different. No shared minutes or group plans. Each phone gets its own individual bill. Not very many minutes, hardly any text messaging. Kiki has only 100 messages, 90% less than she used to have in California. We are thinking of having her messaging thumbs and fingers surgically removed in order to help her stay within her plan.
All in all we were in that store almost 3 hours. I am not kidding or exaggerating. 3 HOURS. Waiting for credit checks, being rejected, waiting some more. I certainly understand that as new residents of a country we are more of a risk than a resident that has been here awhile. We take for granted certain things that we believe are our rights as human beings. Cell phones apparently don't qualify. Now if I can jut get them to open a Crate & Barrel.
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