Super amazing news!

I have some wonderful, joyful news! After an absence of almost 3 years, which I can't quite believe, I am going to Turku! In just over two weeks I'll be getting the ferry to Finland for a few days, and I really am so happy. I had had it in the back of my mind since I got to Stockholm that I should travel there, but hadn't got to it. Then I had a message on Friday from one of my Finnish friends asking when I would come back, and now it's happening! I really hope it hasn't changed too much, my friend Emmi who I met in Turku but now lives in England goes back to see her family now and then, and has mentioned some things about it to me, but I really cannot wait to be back there myself.

However, I must say that my first experience booking with Viking Line has been fairly ridiculous - much more hassle than it needs to be, and both Finnish and Swedish friends who I've asked have told me that they also think the website is terrible.

It's not user friendly - the Swedish site is only available in Swedish, which is ok, but if I'm spending money I often prefer to use a website in English so I have no doubt over what I'm doing. I certainly don't think that services in this country should have to be available in English, and I've been critical of others I've met who expect this. Anyway, I spent all of yesterday attempting to buy tickets, using two different computers, my phone, two different cards - both of which had sufficient funds to make payment, and only ever received error messages. I thought it might be my error as I'd been providing my Swedish address, but my cards are registered to my parents' address in England. I tried their address, that didn't work either! Something that should be so easy was causing me so much stress.

This morning I called their customer service team to try to make the purchase over the phone. The lady I spoke to was helpful, but once she'd made a booking for me she instructed me to go to their website to make payment, which was the problem in the first place! She then tried to make a payment over the phone, the card still didn't work! Maybe their system dislikes cards from outside of Sweden, but I told her it was a UK card and she didn't mention that they didn't accept this. They make reference on their website to ID requirements for non-Nordic citizens, and I would think that for people who are travelling using the ferry would be quite a good option, so I really don't see why a card from another country should cause such problems. 

After payment failed yet again she advised me that I could pay when I check in, and just needed to take my booking number. This is fine for me, but as this has been such a hassle so far I'm anxious that something else will go wrong and my booking will mysteriously go missing or something like that. In fact, I will need to call them again anyway, as when I entered my booking number and name into the website to check that everything was correct the message advised that the name did not match the booking number. I appreciate that my name is unusual for English people, let alone a Swedish person, and the lady I spoke to probably just misheard me or made a typo, but the whole thing is not filling me with confidence.

So in conclusion I'm very happy to be going back to Turku after quite some time, I really cannot wait to see my friends there again, but I'm not impressed at all with Viking Line, to the point that last night I wrote my first complaint in Swedish. Hopefully it sounded as effective in Swedish as in English, and hopefully my trip will actually be straightforward once I've solved the issue of what name they put on my booking. However, if there's a next time I think I'll use a different service, especially as no one seems to have good things to say about booking with Viking Line.

If Sweden was my boyfriend

Krakow was an experience. Mainly I was working, so there wasn't much of a chance to really explore, but being in a country that is completely alien to me made me realise that Sweden is becoming quite comfortable for me now. Every day I'm surrounded by a foreign language, but it's one that I understand, and it felt strange to see a foreign language everywhere that I couldn't even begin to understand. Obviously it's been a learning process to understand this country, and I'm quite sure I've only reached the tip of the iceberg, but this was the point that I realised how much things here have started to make sense to me, and become the "normal" way for me. But now onto an aspect of living here that I really cannot make sense of, and that really is making me question more and more why I'm here.

I don't actually have a bank account in Sweden. In January I was waiting to get a job and get established here, in February I was waiting for a personnummer, in March I had some personal matters to deal with that were more of a priority, and for much of this month I believed I would be leaving soon, thus making it a waste of time to go and open an account. Having decided that I will stay longer, today after work I finally made the effort to go to Handelsbanken. I chose Handelsbanken specifically because numerous sources, including the bank themselves, state that they offer a non-resident bank account. I'm not sure how that's different to any other bank account, but due to not being able to get a personnummer it's really the only option for getting an account in this country in my current circumstances.

So in I go, armed with ID, copies of payslips, my work contract etc, and immediately I'm shut down and told that they don't offer that service. I asked why their own website, plus numerous other sources, claims that they do if they don't. The gentleman at the bank didn't have an answer for that. He told me there have to be exceptional circumstances, or they have to have an existing agreement with my employer, which of course they don't. I suggested they get someone to have a look at the information they're giving out. He suggested I try ICA Banken. I walked outside and burst into tears.

You may ask why having a bank account in Sweden is such a big deal, let alone something to bring me to tears in the middle of the street, especially when my employer has been happily paying my wages into my UK account all this time. I'm losing money just by being here. Every financial transaction I make comes with a fee. My bank casually takes £6 from my wages every month for accepting foreign money, which is a tiny percentage of the wages, but obviously it adds up over time. Worst of all is that when I pay rent to my landlord, who obviously does have a Swedish bank account, my bank charges me an extra £30, which is a significant addition to the rent.

But this is just one part of a bigger problem. Sweden has no respect for me. Sweden is happy to take from me but gives me nothing back. Sweden makes me feel like I'm not a real person. Every time I think things are going well Sweden takes my hope away. Sweden isn't satisfied no matter what I do. I have a sneaking suspicion that Sweden probably doesn't want me around at all. If Sweden was my boyfriend everyone I knew would be telling me to leave.

I am not, and never have been, an idle person. Coming to this country, my intention was always to find a job, contribute, and basically do all the things that any normal, productive member of society does, the same things I have done throughout my adult life. I worked hard to find a job, and a month to the day since I arrived in this country I was starting a new job. I believe that some of this was down to being in the right place at the right time, but I worked hard to find a job, and other people have been uniformly impressed with the speed in which I started working here, and then found a stable place to live. I like my house and my job, and on the surface I probably appear to be very settled. 

Having a personnummer is the key to everything here. Having found a job, everything I knew suggested that I could then get a personnummer, and then get all the other things like a bank account set up. We know how that turned out, and it became clear in my dealings with Skatteverket that the information you get really depends on who you speak to and what the weather is like that day. Not wanting to recognise me as a resident of this country certainly doesn't mean the government is going to let me keep my money, of course not. I'm not entitled to even join a gym here, but I still get a third of my money taken away in taxes, to pay for the royal wedding amongst other things. I'm very much entitled to pay taxes to Sweden, but that's about the only thing I'm entitled to. Every time there seems to be some way to make my life easier, for example opening a non-resident bank account, the door gets slammed in my face once again, and I'm sick of it. 

I can't help but compare this experience to when I lived in Finland. It's now been about four months, and at this point when I was in Finland I had both a bank account and a social security number, and I gained those things through having a one month part time work contract. Now I've been working full time for three months, and I'm entitled to bugger all. When talking about these problems to Swedish people, I've mentioned how in Finland my employer could only pay into a Finnish account. There was a delay at Maistraati in providing me with a social security number, but they'd confirmed I was entitled to one and would receive one, so my friend took me to the bank and we explained the circumstances. It was no trouble at all, they opened an account for me with a generic number, and told me to come back and let them know my real social security number once I had it. I never actually remembered to go back and tell them. Swedish people laugh their heads off at the idea of such a thing happening in a Swedish bank. And to prove the point, the very first question I was asked today, even after specifying that I'd like a non-resident account, was "Can I see your personnummer?" 

I haven't been to Finland in a while, so I can't say for sure how the situation is these days, but from what I know immigration levels are much lower there than in Sweden. When I lived there everyone I knew, except for one person, was Finnish. I was the novelty act because I was foreign. Attitudes to immigrants, even white European ones like me, were not always tolerant. At the time I felt like the authorities might be deliberately making things difficult. Now the way Finland treated me seems like a dream. If I had had the job I have now in Finland I wouldn't have had a care in the world.

I'm sick of basic things being huge struggles. I'm sick of feeling like nobody cares, nobody wants to help, like whatever direction I go in it still leads to nothing. I'm sick of losing money through necessary transactions like getting paid and paying my rent. I've done everything right, and I've not asked for anything except to be treated like everyone else. And it just makes me think more and more, why am I actually bothering? I could move back to London and get treated like a real human being. There are issues in my personal life that make living in England again a good option, and the way I'm treated by the authorities here does nothing to discourage me. I spend more and more time feeling frustrated and unhappy, and I can't help but feel that I deserve better than this.

I don't give up easily. Anyone who knows me will say that when I decide I'm going to do something it will get done, one way or another. I put in so much work, and effort, and resources to come here. I really, really wanted to come here. But I'm starting to feel like I'm fighting a losing battle. I keep wondering what would be good enough for Sweden. I keep wondering what Sweden actually wants me to do. I hate to say it, but if Sweden wants me to leave then unfortunately Sweden is winning. It's wearing me down, and I don't know if I can keep putting up with this.

On the surface things are good. I have a decent job, a nice place to live, a social life, I can speak Swedish - you'd be forgiven for thinking I've really got my shit together here. In some ways I have. But then this kind of problem comes up yet again and reminds me that my life here is very superficial. I really wanted to come here, but I'm starting to get sick of jumping through every hoop and it still not being good enough. You only have to look online at pretty much any expat forum or website to see that I'm not the only one.

I can remember the exact moment in Finland, after being there for just under two months, when I knew I wanted it to be my home, and I knew that I would do whatever it took to stay. I loved it so much, and I did put up with a lot in order to stay. I love Stockholm, and I like my day to day life in Stockholm, but even after double the amount of time I don't feel that burning love that I had in Turku. I am not eager to leave, but there's only so much I'm willing to put up with in order to stay. And I'm not sure for how long I'm willing to be only half a person.

The personnummer problem

I’ve heard so many stories about Skatteverket taking a really long time to respond to personnummer applications. Well, I can now say that they definitely don’t take their time if they want to reject you! I visited them on Monday evening, yesterday I received a letter from them to say no! I was pleased that I found work here more quickly than I did in Finland, but it seems it’ll take me much longer to get a personnummer here than it did in Finland, which was pretty easy once I had a work contract – incidentally, a short term, temporary work contract.

I was expecting this – I was concerned about the length of my work contract anyway, the man who helped me at their office mentioned that this might be a problem – but the reality of it actually happening is very frustrating. I’ll now have to make a second application for a temporary number, which will enable me to pay tax in Sweden, and basically nothing else. I won’t be able to open a bank account, or do any of the other things a personnummer enables you to do. It’s certainly fortunate for me that my employer is able to pay my wages into my UK bank account, otherwise I’d be in an extremely difficult position.

The thing that really irritates me about this situation is that whilst Sweden is more than happy to take my money away from me in the form of taxes, I will not be allowed to benefit from this at all. One particular thing going round in my mind is what would happen in a few months if I needed medical attention – I have an EHIC card issued by the UK, and in September was told at Skatteverket that I’m only entitled to use this for 6 months if I’m living permanently in Sweden. After that the card is basically invalid as I no longer live in the issuing country, but I’m quite sure there’s no way I could apply for another card issued by Sweden when I’m not officially recognised as a person who lives in Sweden!

In this country you can apply for a personnummer if your partner qualifies for one, hence why I applied for both of us on Monday. This surely means that there are a lot of foreign people here with Swedish partners, or partners who have other grounds for being given a personnummer here, who have their own personnummers but don’t work or bring anything to the table in this country - and I’m sure in some cases have no intention of working or contributing in this country – who are treated equally to Swedish people and can fully live their lives here, whereas I work for a living, pay taxes, and contribute to this country but see no benefit whatsoever. That seems rather unjust, and quite frankly, really, really pisses me off. I briefly considered not even applying for the temporary number, but I believe this is used to work out the “correct” amount of tax I should be paying, so not doing it could hinder me financially. I say “correct” because I think the correct amount should actually be zero – if I contribute my money to the system I think it’s only fair that the system gives me something back. But obviously that would be far too easy.

The thing that makes it more complicated for me is that in general my workplace just offers short term contracts. I met someone yesterday who has worked here for 5 years, and has had 7 different short term contracts in that time. I believe she studied in Sweden before starting work, so her situation is probably a bit different, but in theory could they take taxes for that long and still claim you’re not entitled to a permanent number? Someone else told me that they’d taken short term contracts adding up to a year to Skatteverket and they still weren’t happy! The letter I received yesterday seemed to imply that they needed to know you would still be here a year into the future, which suggests to me that if you only had a contract for a few months into the future they could still say no, regardless of how long you’d lived and worked in Sweden up until that point. But then, in September they also told me that it’s necessary to have a personnummer if you’re here for at least one year. When I apply for the temporary number I need to find out at what point they will accept that I’m here for the long term, regardless of the length of my contract, because clearly there is the potential for me to work here for several years on short term contracts. Unless I get a new job with a long term contract, or Kai gets one, allowing me to apply as his partner, it seems like the earliest point this could be resolved is a year from now, which is ridiculous!

It makes me so angry that it’s really easy for someone from another EU country to move to England, when it’s so difficult for me to go the other way. If a Swedish person decided to move to England all they would need to do is make an appointment to get a National Insurance number – which basically involves showing their passport to prove that they’re from an EU country – and then they’re good to go. Plus seeing as National Insurance relates to paying tax, proving you’re allowed to work in the country, and literally nothing else, if you are unemployed or not intending to work it really makes no difference to your day to day life whether or not you have this number. Whereas here I am, working in Sweden, paying taxes in Sweden, but not recognised as a resident of Sweden, not entitled to open a bank account, or even join a gym! I’m wondering if this will be an issue with trying to rent a house in a few months, unless it’s a private contract with a landlord who is just satisfied that I am employed. Thankfully we are moving somewhere new today so we have a while before we need to worry about that, and hopefully our circumstances will have moved along a bit by then.

In a way, I don’t even know why I’m shocked by this situation. I remember in Finland being expected to pay €50 to register as a foreign resident of Finland. €50 for “the right” to live in a country I allegedly already have the right to live in as an EU citizen. Freedom of movement within Europe means absolutely nothing, it just means I can go on holiday to another European country without needing to apply for a visa, and here it just meant I didn’t have to bother getting a residence permit from Migrationsverket.

The past couple of weeks have been full of highs and lows – I think when you’re in a strange environment with little support you feel things more strongly. A small success can make everything feel better, a small setback can make everything seem worse. I’ll try not to worry about this too much until I can get some more information from Skatteverket about what I can expect in the future if I have to continue with short term contracts. I’m a bit concerned, but more angry at how unfair this system is. I feel like I’m contributing and integrating, but at the same time I’m on the fringes with fewer options than others. I hope that this is not the start of a problem that will go on for years.

A huge complaint

There is one part of my experience moving to Stockholm that has left a very unpleasant taste in my mouth, and it has nothing to do with Stockholm or Sweden. It is to do with the company I used to send some belongings ahead of me, a company based in the UK called First Luggage. I am writing about this here because I know that this blog is likely to be read, either now or in the future, by people who may be moving to Sweden from the UK, and I feel that this is relevant to anyone considering moving abroad from the UK.

I used First Luggage three years ago when I was moving back from Turku and needed to send some things ahead of me, and I was completely satisfied by their service. I remember that I actually entered the wrong collection date when making my booking, and this was changed without any difficulties at all. The luggage was collected and delivered promptly, and based on this experience I had no hesitation in using them this time. In fact I didn't even consider any other options because I was so confident in using First Luggage. What a mistake that turned out to be!

Heli agreed that my luggage could be delivered to her house in Stockholm, and so I booked the collection, arranging for my case to arrive here the day before I did, and paying over £100 for the privilege. A few days before the collection was due I received a phone call from First Luggage, informing me that the delivery address was incorrect, and that their system was displaying "foreign characters." The person I spoke to did not elaborate on this, and also told me she had googled the address and it didn't exist. I told her that I was quite sure my friend knew her own address, but that I would check with her and get back to them. Heli obviously confirmed that the address she'd given to me was correct, and for the sake of it I decided to google the address myself. It was definitely there.

Heli's address contains some accented letters that don't appear in the English alphabet. First Luggage claim that they can deliver your luggage anywhere in the world, but if their system can't recognise accented characters that surely rules out multiple addresses in Scandinavia, Iceland, Finland, France, Germany, Spain and other Spanish speaking countries, to name a few. I started to wonder if first time round I was just lucky that my address in Finland only contained letters also found in the English alphabet. I also considered that when entering address details on the First Luggage website, you're only able to enter them in a UK format, with the postcode coming last after the city name. This is not how Swedish addresses are laid out, nor Finnish addresses, and I'm sure addresses in some other countries have a different layout too, and I wondered if this might also cause a difficulty.

Anyway, when First Luggage contacted me it was a Friday, and it is unfortunate that the following Monday was a UK bank holiday, meaning it wasn't possible for me to speak to them. I know this is not their fault, and it is just unfortunate timing.

My collection was booked for the morning of the Tuesday, so I called them first thing in the morning to confirm that the address in Sweden was correct. I spoke to the same person as on Friday, who told me she would speak to her operations team and get back to me. I have previously worked in customer service for a well known gift retailer in the UK, and regularly dealt with a number of serious complaints. I really think this has made me more patient and reasonable than the average customer, as I am aware of how much stress and pressure customer service staff are sometimes put under. However, two hours later I still had not heard anything and needed to go to work, so I called First Luggage again. They didn't seem to have made any progress with the issue, and asked me to email the address to them. I did this immediately, and quickly received a reply confirming that the address was ok, they would send me the documents I needed that day, and would collect my suitcase on Wednesday morning instead. I sent two further emails, one asking when the luggage was likely to get to Stockholm in light of the delay, and another asking that the documents were sent to me by 4pm. This was because I did not have a printer at home, as I had mentioned on the phone, and would need to print the documents at work. First Luggage make it very clear that you must print the documents they send and give them to the courier when they arrive. I did not receive a response to either email.

I finished work at 4pm, and still did not have a copy of the documents I needed. I called them yet again, and was promised that I'd receive them by close of business, which was apparently 5.30pm. I was not very impressed, as I would now have to pay to have the documents printed. I informed First Luggage that I was moving abroad, they were delaying me in dealing with multiple other things I needed to do before leaving the country, and that I wanted a partial refund. When I said the whole experience had been ridiculous, the person on the phone actually agreed with me, but she did not apologise, and tried to blame the whole thing on the bank holiday. In regards to a partial refund, she told me "we'll see" once I had received the documents. So that basically meant no.

5.30 came and went, no documents were received, so I sent them a lengthy complaint email explaining what had gone on up to that point. I received a phone call from a different member of staff first thing the next morning, and to be fair to him, he was apologetic and seemed sincere. He had arranged for my luggage to be delivered to their office, so that they could attach the paperwork themselves, and to then be sent on an express service to Sweden so that it would still arrive on time. He told me it would actually arrive the next day, which did not help because Heli had arranged to stay at home on Friday, not Thursday. He told me he'd add a note asking that delivery was made on Friday, and also assured me I'd still be receiving a written response from a manager.

The case was collected and delivered, and I safely arrived in Stockholm. Last week I realised I had not received a response to my email, so I forwarded this to them and chased a response, pointing out that the email had obviously been received and read, otherwise no one would have contacted me the day after I sent it. And then it all gets worse...

Yesterday I found that another week had passed with no response from First Luggage, so I took to social media to air my concerns. Within minutes of posting on their Facebook page, which has over 8,000 likes, they commented that they would look into this as a matter of urgency. A while later I received an email from their Customer Care Manager, who just fobbed me off. He claimed that the initial communication issues were caused by a problem with their phone system. Frankly I find this quite confusing, as I had to call them multiple times and never had a problem getting through on the phone. The problem was that they failed to respond to emails, emails that I know for a fact they received and read. He also provided me with a £25 voucher to use against my next booking. It's an insult to my intelligence that they think I would use their service again after this. I had already told them several times that my previous experience with them was excellent, and that they had completely ruined this.

I replied to this email, informing them that their voucher was worthless as there is never going to be another booking, and that I didn't see what the phone system had to do with the issue. When I worked in customer service we occasionally had issues with the phone system, but this never affected our ability to send emails to customers. Considering that an email I sent on a Tuesday evening was read at about 8.30 the following morning says to me that they weren't struggling to catch up that much. I wanted some honesty, and a partial refund rather than a voucher I would never use, a voucher worth less than a quarter of what I paid for this shambles.

I decided to add a comment to my Facebook post, and discovered that it had mysteriously disappeared from their page! First Luggage clearly are concerned primarily with protecting their image - whether or not the customer is satisfied isn't relevant. I then posted again, specifically pointing out that they had removed my previous negative post from their page, and that I really felt the 8,000 people who liked their page deserved to see a real customer's experience with them.

At around the same time two rather odd things happened that just made the situation worse. First of all, a request to add First Luggage as a contact on Skype appeared. My Skype details are not listed anywhere, meaning that First Luggage had gone searching for my details, and I'm unsure how legal or ethical this is. Secondly, Heli text me and said they'd called her, claiming they thought that was my Swedish phone number. They know it isn't - they called her on that number to check my luggage had arrived, I provided that number at the point of booking, weeks before I even got to Sweden, and have never indicated to them that the number belongs to me. Contacting her when she hasn't even made the complaint is totally unacceptable.

I then received an email from the manager, not addressing anything I'd said, but saying he'd like to discuss the matter on Skype as he doesn't want to send emails back and forth, and also doesn't want to cause me a costly phone bill. I'm very hesitant to do this, as I will then have no evidence of anything that is discussed, and my knowledge of complaints procedure tells me that serious complaints like this should be kept in writing as far as possible. I replied to him telling him exactly this. I'm now waiting to see what happens from there.

If they had just dealt with the complaint at the time I would not be making the fuss I am now, and it's almost like they're intentionally causing more trouble for themselves by acting in a questionable manner. I am so frustrated with these people, and this is honestly the worst experience I've ever had with an organisation of any kind. I'm shocked at how bad their customer service is, and I think my former colleagues would agree that if any of us had acted in this way we may not have had jobs for much longer. I am an intelligent person, and First Luggage will not succeed in fobbing me off.

This morning I looked online for reviews of the company, and it seems I'm far from the only person who has had a negative experience. I'm also not the only one who doesn't get replies to complaints. It looks like I just got lucky first time round, and that using them again was a massive error. I don't want to keep dealing with this, it is no more enjoyable for me than it is for them, but I refuse to let them get away with this. 

The time now in the UK is 10.30am, so they are definitely in their office, and as yet I have heard nothing. I will keep chasing this, perhaps they think they can just make me go away, but what they don't know is that I learned from some very tricky customers and I will not be disappearing without a resolution. I wonder how long this nonsense will get dragged on for...