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A NIN is not just for Christmas, it’s for life

Shortly after we arrived in the UK back in early October, I sent away for a National Insurance Number (NIN). I already have one as I worked here over 15 years ago but I couldn’t remember what it was so I had to fill in a “I’ve lost my NIN form” and send it away.

They took a very long time to get back to me – almost two months! I phoned them a couple of times to find out what the problem was and whether I could just get a new one. They were adamant that the NIN was for life and that everyone only ever gets one NIN. Ok, no worries, I’ll just wait.

Earlier this week my NIN finally arrived in the post – yay – so I emailed it to the HR department at my work. Then yesterday my NIN arrived again – but it’s different to the first one! Now I have two 🙂

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Comments

21 responses to “A NIN is not just for Christmas, it’s for life”

  1. scifihammy Avatar
    scifihammy

    haha Now what do you do?? 🙂

    Reply
    1. Rachel M Avatar
      Rachel M

      I’m going to have to ring them yet again and sit on hold for hours on end until I get to speak to a human who will hopefully tell me which number to use.

      Reply
      1. scifihammy Avatar
        scifihammy

        Good luck! Have a good book on hand while you wait – Any Charles Dickens would do! 😀

  2. Denise Avatar
    Denise

    Oh yes you have come across our squeezed-to-the-bone bureaucracy system, where any official paperwork takes week to get through the bottleneck that is the seemingly one sole person who is dealing with that area.
    Your kids might have UPNs now that they are in school, I don’t know if the system extends to Scotland. These are Unique Pupil Numbers, and very rarely they get allocated two, which causes problems. But never the other way round! Magically, no-one two pupils ever get the same number that I have heard of.

    Reply
    1. Rachel M Avatar
      Rachel M

      I haven’t heard of the UPNs so if the kids have one, I don’t know what it is.

      There is a lot of bureaucracy, I do agree. It probably doesn’t help when mistakes like this happen and end up taking up more of everyone’s time. Although it would have been best if I just hadn’t lost my NIN to begin with.

      Reply
      1. Denise Avatar
        Denise

        It has been 15 years! I can’t even keep stuff for 15 months… or 15 days sometimes…

  3. ladysighs Avatar
    ladysighs

    You can be twice as sick. 🙂

    Reply
    1. Rachel M Avatar
      Rachel M

      Haha, that would be nice but I don’t think so.

      Reply
  4. Victor Venema Avatar
    Victor Venema

    I wonder if the Nine Inch Nails were aware of the UK National Insurance Number.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66GHz-H4k6M

    Reply
    1. Rachel M Avatar
      Rachel M

      Haha, Victor, did you see my twitter feed or did you also think I was referring to Nine Inch Nails?

      Reply
      1. Victor Venema Avatar
        Victor Venema

        No, had not noticed it on twitter. NIN is Nine Inch Nails outside of the UK.

      2. Rachel M Avatar
        Rachel M

        I’m sure it’s also Nine Inch Nails in the UK too. But I haven’t listened to this group since I was about 18 years old so it was the furthest thing from my mind when I wrote this however you’re not the only person to have thought that’s what I meant.

  5. Chait Avatar
    Chait

    Every rule has an exception, aye.

    Reply
    1. Rachel M Avatar
      Rachel M

      Yes, so it seems!

      Reply
  6. GrahamInHats Avatar
    GrahamInHats

    You know when you’ve been Ninja d 🙂

    Reply
    1. Rachel M Avatar
      Rachel M

      Is that what happened? 🙂

      Reply
      1. GrahamInHats Avatar
        GrahamInHats

        It’s more a case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing. You get that a lot with British bureaucracy. Stick with it and you’ll probably get a dog license. 🙂

  7. Victor Venema Avatar
    Victor Venema

    Leaving out your recent posts, your most popular posts are about offensive vegan porn beaver breasts.

    Reply
    1. Rachel M Avatar
      Rachel M

      Yes, that’s funny. Clearly I should be writing about breasts and pubic hair if I want to boost my traffic 🙂

      Reply
  8. anniegoldfisher Avatar
    anniegoldfisher

    Perhaps after you have waited for hours on hold, you should invoice them for your time.

    Reply
    1. Rachel M Avatar
      Rachel M

      My invoice would probably get lost. 🙂

      Reply

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