Cypriot Pension paid to UK

[Maggie B]

I don't there will be a problem with them paying out the pension albeit about 8 months after applying for it. The problem was the Euro account but, 'our Trev' has given us the perfect solution. Thanks again that man.

Also, thank you for all for the other input/suggestions - especially Rita for supplying the relevant contact details.

Maggie B

PS Maybe I've tempted fate there but I will let you all know how we get on.

[Poppy]

Maggie,if you do decide to use Bank of Cyprus UK, they are very good and I have no complaints about our time with them as they were the only UK Bank which would allow us to open a UK account with only a Cyprus address.We are now in the process of closing our account with them as they do charge a quarterly fee and we can get better interest rates elsewhere but they provide an excellent service.

[Poppy]

As has been said before Charis also helped us with the refund of my husbands Defence tax which had been overpaid by us over several years. I very much doubt we would have received it without Charis help BUT I personally did not find his fees modest - I believe he charged us 20% of what we expected to receive. Maybe as HIC has used his service several times he is cheaper as he assured us that he would be if we further required his services? So we actually paid him over €200 .

[Maggie B]

Maggie,if you do decide to use Bank of Cyprus UK, they are very good and I have no complaints about our time with them as they were the only UK Bank which would allow us to open a UK account with only a Cyprus address.We are now in the process of closing our account with them as they do charge a quarterly fee and we can get better interest rates elsewhere but they provide an excellent service.

Well Poppy, we were certainly VERY happy with the BOC when we lived in Paphos, and in fact still have a Cyprus current account open with them. Unfortunately, we (stupidly) never arranged a forwarding address for our new debit cards. I can still 'log on' and see the balance which we cannot get our grubby paws on. I WILL eventually get my backside into gear and sort it out.

Thankyou for your reassuring advice. X

Maggie B

[Poppy]

Maggie
If you can still log on why not transfer your balance to your UK account using transferwise. I needed to keep my account open for a short while as I thought I would need my Visa for hiring a car until we bought our own ( not in fact needed!) so we then had the entire balance transferred with Transferwise and I wrote a letter to them requesting my account be closed. They never replied but within a couple of weeks our Visas and current account were all closed.

[smudger]

Maybe naive question, in which case sincere apologies, but can Cypriot pensions be paid into a UK sterling account?

Feel I really should know the answer to this, but I don't

[Poppy]

Stay awake Smudger!! That is what Maggie was saying in her first post that Cyprus were insisting it had to be a Euro account probably because they are not prepared to use an intermediary Bank to do the currency transfer as the UK does

[smudger]

I am awake Poppy, honest! Just finding this thread a tad confusing, probably mainly due to the fact it doesn't affect me at all. Sorry folks, will try to do better

[Poppy]

Wrong HIC!! Stop putting words into my mouth! I never said I was ungrateful in fact at the time last year I said how grateful I was and as I have said already I very much doubt we would have received the refund before we left Cyprus without Charis so just where have I ever inferred I was ungrateful. However I still maintain that 20% was expensive and certainly your fee of 50% extortionate!! I actually said if you read my post that I paid him OVER €200 so again don't make assumptions on the actual amount!!
You certainly have had a varied business career Lloyd- finding savings for corporate clients,carpet cleaning,pool safety !!

[Poppy]

HIC don't quibble. You quoted incorrect amounts- full stop.
You now say I paid 20% and of course received 80% - correct.
What was a little worrying at the time was that I had worked out what I thought my husband was owed which involved a lot of paperwork for each year he was claiming a refund going back to 2010 but neither I or Charis knew if my calculations were correct or if indeed they would accept a back dated claim going back so far.( I certainly could not get an answer from them) The tax office needed the originals of all the bank interest statements for each year and those we could not find I had to pay the Banks to provide. It was a little galling I suppose that I had done all the groundwork but I am still grateful to Charis. Re the tax no;my husband had remained as tax resident in the UK as his income was lower than even the tax threshold there so he had no tax No in Cyprus but although no tax No they still deducted defence tax year on year so in my ignorance I found it hard to understand that on one hand they could deduct tax but on the other not refund it!

[PhotoLady]

At the end of the day, the money is legally yours whether it be overpayments or pensions. Nobody should have to pay someone to get it paid out, particularly in the case of a pension!

Lack of staff is not an excuse and I still say I don't believe the local people will sit back and wait for it to be their turn. Certainly if it's the best part of a year with no income.... Some people have obviously created their own niche in the market and I wouldn't be surprised to find there's someone at the other end assisting....

[WHL]

[quote=PhotoLady post_id=16745 time=1493542307 user_id=100]
At the end of the day, the money is legally yours whether it be overpayments or pensions. Nobody should have to pay someone to get it paid out, particularly in the case of a pension!

Lack of staff is not an excuse and I still say I don't believe the local people will sit back and wait for it to be their turn. Certainly if it's the best part of a year with no income.... Some people have obviously created their own niche in the market and I wouldn't be surprised to find there's someone at the other end assisting....
[/quote

[WHL]

Agree100% the Cypriots with a relation/friend working in a Government dept will get them to sort things out, the ones without a friend/relation will stay at the back of the line...I dont care how HIC spins it in this day and age its disgusting you have to pay someone to get you what is legally yours.

[PhotoLady]

Cyprus is not the UK...and people who can't come to terms with that realisation often end up unhappy and bitter and ultimately return to the UK.

What a load of rubbish, Lloyd - I cannot believe I've read that coming from you
It has absolutely nothing to do with what this thread is about......

[Poppy]

Nope not me - neither unhappy or bitter!!

[WHL]

Because some things haven't changed in a hundred years it dosnt mean you have to accept them...this isnt a Cypriot v Expat thing,,,,it affects us all.....you could say the way Victorians put kids up chimneys was the way it was, according to your thinking you should accept it and dont change it.....

[PhotoLady]

I didn't think for one minute you were referring to me Lloyd I just felt it wasn't pertinent to the thread and a pretty bad off the cuff remark on your part, which is unusual for you.

But I tell you this, after the public holiday I shall be asking some rather probing questions to some folks in Cyprus high up places about
1) the delays in Cyprus Pension payments and
2) why people have to resort to (and give up) a portion of the cash that is rightfully theirs to other people to release it for them after they've funded it for years.

I know our Cypriot landlord next door didn't have to wait 8 months to start receiving his pension payments. He was a maintenance engineer at a hotel in Limassol...

[smudger]

Have to say I agree with Lloyd on this. It's fine to say 'you shouldn't have to do this' or 'it's ridiculous/unacceptable/stupid' or whichever epithet you choose. If at the end of the day you are not receiving your entitlements and - talking to the appropriate authorities, protesting as loud as you can, contacting whatever other bodiesyou can think of - yield no results, what the hell is the answer???

I am in a similar situation regarding my title deeds, and have neither the will nor the inclination to continue arguing with land registry and developer, going back and forth, so I'm happy to use an intermediary to sort it. Yes, it costs me, but at the end of the day I will hopefully avoid paying my developer €000's for sheer shoddy workmanship which he never rectified, pay him €500 for doing absolutely damn all and finally get the title deeds which are my due, given that I paid for the property 10 years ago! If I have to pay Charis 20% of what my developer is demanding, I will be happy to pay this if it saves me the other 80%!!

I do realise this is not quite the same as trying to claim pensions to which you have contributed, and are your right, but at the end of the day, if Cyprus is sitting on its hands and closing its eyes to this blatant discrimination, what is the answer?

As Lloyd says, this is Cyprus not the UK.

[PaphosAL]

20% is a bit of a steep fee though, is it not, Jacs? AL x

[smudger]

Depends where you're coming from Al, I'm sick of trying to sort this and getting nowhere, so happy to save 80% of a few grand rather than paying out 100% of it!