Kilkis wrote:.... BUT you can open a UK Domestic Account with Barclays registered to your Greek address providing you go into a Barclays branch in the UK with your passport and a utility bill. Perhaps worth taking a couple of bills ........
Let's hope Barclays domestic is less difficult than Barclays International. We were initially welcomed by the International outfit (minimum deposit was £50k in 2008) until it came to acceptable documentation - ID was no problem but proof of address was a nightmare. Having sold our house here and started renting the main utility bills were in the landlords name so unacceptable. The only one we had was an OTE (fixed line) bill. "Sorry, we don't accept 'phone bills".
"How about Barclays Bank statements that are mailed to our current Greek address?" "Sorry, we don't accept Barclays Bank documentation".
Other stuff they refused to accept, all things mailed to our Greek address, included letters and documents from HMRC, letters from The Pensions Service, a letter from the British Embassy in Athens and various other stuff that I no longer remember. They would have accepted original, printed statements that had been mailed to us from other banks or credit card companies but not statements downloaded from Internet banking. The only one we could produce was refused because it was not an account in joint names and was, therefore, addressed to only one of us.
We gave up, had an enjoyable three days city break in Zurich and came home with three accounts (all with zero balances) into which we could transfer funds as soon as Internet banking had been organised. That took about 40 minutes of our break, half of which was organising coffee and bikkies. They did not ask for any proof of address and were completely unsurprised that we'd had problems with a UK based bank .... "They are the most difficult to deal with". I think they assumed we'd give a genuine address as they'd be sending, separately by mail, PINs, cards and an access security device.
Just make absolutely certain you have documents they will accept.