To think it's quite hard to find proof of address these days

[lookingforthecorkscrew]

Because nobody has paper bills?

New letting agency want proof of address from the last three months, they've stated something like a mobile phone bill or bank statement.

But DH and I do all of our billing online, surely most people do these days.

Apparently my driving license isn't a valid proof of address either, it has to be a bill.

Council tax or water bill are usually paper. Child benefit letter, payslip?

If you have online banking just print out the last three months statements. That’s been fine for both letting agencies we’ve used.

If you do a download of your bills they will have your address on.

You should be able to print your bank statements out and they will have your address on it. Can do the same with mobiles if you can log in to your account.

Council tax, water bills will also work if you have them.

If you don't have a printer then maybe go to a library.

Yep, it's really irritating. Especially if your OH is like mine and shreds everything. The day we applied for our mortgage was a nightmare - we wound up having to use letters that were slightly older than 3 months, luckily the bank OK'd it. I do understand the importance of watertight AML (work in this area) but it's a total ballache.

Surely you just print them from online if you need to? Always been accepted when I've had to do it.

Just print them ?

They said we couldn't just print them!!

I'm going to anyway.

I went into my bank and asked them to print off statements and it wasn't accepted as the people asking did not accept anything that had been 'online'.

I've now started getting paper bills for a credit card just to have the ID available if needed. Even my council tax is online these days.

My bank tried to charge me £10 to print off a statement when I needed it for an Estate Agent. I couldn't believe how lucky I was when I got home and my council tax statement had been delivered in the morning - I'd never been so pleased to see one of those.

We were also told that we couldn't just print them off ourselves.

Most won’t let you just print stuff at home, they want the originals.

They should accept a council tax bill more than 3 months old as they are sent yearly and are very “official”.

You can also ask your bank to print and stamp statements in the branch, the letting agency should accept those. They shouldn’t charge for it! (Mine didn’t). You could also phone your water or energy company and ask them to send you a one off paper statement.

The Home Office will only accept printed online statements that have been stamped by the bank to prove they are correct! I'm afraid I insist on having all my bills and statements on paper and don't shred anything.

You can ring the council or water company and they will send you a summary. Water people were lovely and got it in two days, council were dicks,20£ fee and 3 week wait.

I have changed back to paper bills for my bank and a couple of bills. Lots of companies won't accept a printed copy as proof of id so it's just easy to have paper bills

Yes, it is. I was also told that print outs didn't count and as we were almost paperless, it was very difficult. We need id cards!

I have an interview this morning...and yep same problem! All my bank Statements are online and DH is the named person on stuff like the water bill, gas etc.
By sheer luck HMRC had just updated my tax code from a second job so I'm taking that!

Yes we've had this problem to, think it's about time they did something about it as it's so hard to prove proof of address now. We to are almost totally paperless.

The last few things i had through the post with my address on were TV licence renewal letter, car tax renewal letter, HMRC letter. Have you got any of those? Are they deemed acceptable?

The reason bills you've printed yourself are generally unacceptable is because it's so easy to doctor them and create your own. I had fraud training when I worked in Benefits and a large part of the course was how to spot doctored documents. We had paperwork coming in every week that was made up!

You can also ask the Council for a copy of your last bill to be produced and posted out to you.

I had the problem that I didn't want to send in my passport (I had to travel overseas and didn't want it 'in the post' when I needed it) and I have an old stylee paper driving licence. So no photo ID. The solicitor was slightly baffled - I was sitting in front of her, but she couldn't take that as proof, apparently.

Luckily they took my HMRC tax letter as proof of identity or I would have been screwed. I don't know what people do who don't have a passport or driving licence for photo ID.

I agree, it’s a nightmare, especially when they say ‘no online print outs only originals’ always a palaver!

Email them your bills then.

I had to print mine out then take into my bank (which was a pain because the nearest branch is 30 miles away) and have them stamped