Proof of who I am.

TBagpuss

Comms69 wrote: »

It would help if companies stopped being pedantic about the passport being 'valid'.


As proof of id the valid to and from date is irrelevant.


I may not accept it as proof of entitlement to work or rent, but that isn't the case here

Part of the problem is that the companies aren't just being pedantic. If they are held not to have done appropriate checks and there does turn out to be anything dodgy, the relevant employee can face criminal charges, with a risk of up to 14 years imprisonment. Most organisations therefore prefer to take a cautious approach to ID checks!

Frankly, it's a far bigger pain for the companies than it is for you as an individual. If you don't like it, complaint to your MP, they are the ones who made the rules.

Also, given that the purpose of taking photo ID is to check that the person you are meeting is the same as the person the ID belongs to, an expired passport isn't as good, not least because the photo will be over 10 years old.

OP - is your wife not on the Council tax bill? If not, then the quickest and easiest way to address this would probably be to add her name to one of the household bills, or for her to apply for a credit card.

Another option may be to speak to the agents about what else they would be willing to accept: for instance, if they accept letters from DWP then applying for a state pension forecast might be an option.

davidmcn

Smodlet wrote: »

Can't get a passport without a birth certificate but will a bank accept that? Will they, hell.

You'd be happy for your bank to accept anybody as being you simply because they've got a copy of your birth certificate (a document readily available from a public register)?

Flugelhorn

How did she get her DBS without suitable ID / proof of residence?

lisyloo

If this is one companies procedures rather than strictly the law, then I'm suprised no one has suggested changing estate agent.

Smodlet

davidmcn wrote: »

You'd be happy for your bank to accept anybody as being you simply because they've got a copy of your birth certificate (a document readily available from a public register)?

No. I also have bank cards, credit cards, utility bills. To those who deem not driving or ever having had a reason to get a passport a choice, you are absolutely right. I chose not to spend money I did not and do not have on things I can do without.

Surrey_EA

lisyloo wrote: »

If this is one companies procedures rather than strictly the law, then I'm suprised no one has suggested changing estate agent.

All estate agents must perform anti money laundering checks on both buyers and sellers, by law. However, it is up to the individual firm exactly what procedures they adopt.

bowlhead99

Comms69 wrote: »

It would help if companies stopped being pedantic about the passport being 'valid'.

As proof of id the valid to and from date is irrelevant.

I may not accept it as proof of entitlement to work or rent, but that isn't the case here

An expired passport is not as good proof of ID as a current one.

I may have an expired passport but don't have a current one because although the government of the day saw fit to issue me with that ID, it turned out to be wrong in some material fact and they won't give me another one. Maybe that's not my name any more because I changed name or got married.

Maybe it's not my passport for me John Smith but for some other John Smith. Or maybe it's for another person Joe Bloggs, in whose name I wish to apply, even though my name is John Smith. In each case Other John or Joe won't know that I have access to his document because he lost it years ago and got it replaced and now uses another one with a current date on it.

From perspective of a financial services business if I have already identified you using passport I probably won't need to re identify you when the passport expires, because I already know who I am dealing with and a new "valid to" date on a document doesn't change that. I may want to get a refreshed document for someone overseas who lives in a higher risk country, but not for a typical customer But when I am setting up a risk framework and policies to decide what standards of documentation I accept, "old government-issued ID that's expired and no longer valid for its purpose" is not high on my list of great personal identity documents.

MarcoM

AdrianC wrote: »

I don't think you know what "money laundering" is.

I do know what that is.
The one thing I don' t know is whether you have a brain or not or if you are simply one of the many jobsworths that deal with this kind of requests.

bowlhead99

MarcoM wrote: »

I do know what that is.

You do seem to know what it is because you mention it is always in the broadsheet newspapers whether in relation to oligarchs or local spivs. So presumably you recognise it as a problem to be addressed.

But you don't like the idea of giving personal details and identification documents to jobsworths.

Ok, so would you support the idea of giving those details to non-jobsworths instead - senior people who can think for themselves and have authority to find acceptable creative solutions when the standard box-ticking solutions are not possible or appropriate?

Presumably yes you are generally supportive of properly identifying the people in a chain of property transactions because you recognise that money laundering and terrorist financing is bad and there is dirty money using the real estate market which we as a country would like to try to counter where possible, and so it's quite reasonable for an organisation to find out more about the individual beneficiaries of a transaction with whom they're dealing. You just don't like the 'jobsworth' aspect of the process.

A non-jobsworth would set the frameworks an organisation needs to follow to cover off their operational and regulatory risks, and would attempt to ensure those frameworks are followed within the organisation where possible and things are escalated where necessary and that some alternative workaround can be used when the preferred 'easy option' doesn't work. However, the non-jobsworths - who might be trusted to make high quality independent decisions on behalf of an organisation - are typically highly trusted individuals or specialists with lots of experience ; so they are expensive people to engage in the day to day operations 'at the coal face' of a high volume of transactions.

So what happens is these smart intelligent non-jobsworths will delegate some of the work to cheaper day-to-day operations staff who have to follow well-established standard processes (to avoid making mistakes which can expose the organisation to risk); those people to whom the work is delegated will generally try to follow the rules closely, because they know it's "more than their job's worth" to depart from the rules and make up their own rules on the fly.

If you are in a special situation which warrants it, you may succeed in pushing back on the 'jobsworth' to get to the decision-maker behind the scenes. However, if you and all the other customers wanted to deal with that decision-maker in the first instance, and not deal with any jobsworth middlemen, you would find all the services you wanted to buy were more expensive because you refuse to deal with affordable staff who collect all the information for the decision makers.

The one thing I don' t know is whether you have a brain or not or if you are simply one of the many jobsworths that deal with this kind of requests.

Usually in threads like these, we have someone opening the thread with some problem they want to resolve, and then typically the response are along the lines of:

- some well-meaning people trying to give a solution or practical advice to the OP about what they could do next...

- some other well-meaning people who don't have much of a solution to offer but will try to help the OP feel less aggrieved by explaining the background to the situation in which they find themselves ; in case they don't understand why they are being asked for info or documents and would be less annoyed if they knew the bigger picture...

- some other well-meaning people who won't resolve the OP's problem but will reply to other replies to share their insight on a related point, perhaps going a little off topic from the OP by generally answering a point raised by a reply rather than a specific question from the OP... and;

-some people who can't help the OP and don't want to share any great insights but just want to rant about how society is all messed up compared to how they would run the country themselves; insulting others who disagree by saying those others must be stupid or in a menial job or whatever.

The latter category tends to be the one whose members find it harder to make friends online - other than like-minded intolerant people who want to join in the online "grumpy old man" club for lack of anything better to do.