PEO Croydon Experience

[jinfenggoh]

First of all, thanks to the experience of the members in this forum, I must say that my time at the PEO went reasonably smoothly.

Hopefully my experience will also help other people. Here goes:

My appointment was booked on 12th April 1015.
Arrived at 0900 but told by the guard to go away until 0945.
Got back and was told to queue up for the security.

Went through security, got my page stamped and went up to pay.
I called HSBC the day before and the person on the phone put down a note saying that £1800 will be going out of the credit card today. Maybe this helped, the payment went through without a hitch.

Now, sat down to wait. I think probably waited around 1 hour before I got called for my case to be registered.

Then was sent up to 2nd floor for biometrics enrollment. I was given the number 92, and when I got up there, they were calling 097, 101, 093, in random order, so when they called 093 again, I stood up and said, I was 092. This seemed to confuse the guy shouting out the numbers and he told me to sit down.

Then after around 15 mins and after shouting out 101, 103, with no success, he asked me to go to him and he checked my application. Then the next number to be called was 092. Got my biometrics taken after signing away my life (must make sure not to touch the grey box while signing your life away!)

It is now about 1130. My previous experience with UKBA 3 years ago was that I get called, caseworker takes my docs, then I go out have lunch and come back later. So I waited, and waited. Lots of numbers got called which were not in sequence. 1200 went past, 1300 went past, 1330 went past and I decided that I will have a hole in my stomach soon if I don't eat. So I went and bought a pasty from the shop (I am still on the 2nd floor). Then after eating the first mouthful of scalding hot pasty, my number was called.

So, my caseworker, she was really efficient. Took her all of 15 minutes to finish my case. Then she said that my biometric details have not come through yet, and my heart sank. But she said, not to worry and it is just a bit slow, not down. So she said I should go and wait a bit more. During this time, I heard even more callings for biometric appointments which were not answered. Can't they get a better system for this thing?

So after another 15 minutes on the chairs, she called my number again and gave me back my documents! My visa is due to expire mid June 2012, and she gave me 2 years exactly to mid June 2014! What a nice lady! So in the end I got out of the office at 1430.

I have asked in this forum if I am allowed to travel before I get my BRP and have been told no. I have also been told no from the UKBA hotline. So I tried asking again, and it was again a no. So I have resigned myself to not travelling until I get my BRP. In theory, you should not have an issue with travelling because the visa that I have is still valid until mid June and there is no obvious mark in the visa. However, if they take your fingerprints at the airport and find that you should have a BRP and you have not got one, what do you do? So, I repeat myself, I decided not to travel until the BRP arrives. I will update this post again when it does arrive.

It's a bit of a long winded post, but hope this will help add to the information in this forum which is very useful.

Information submitted:
1. Payslips (stamped with company seal and signed by my MD)
2. Letter from employer (based on template in this forum! very useful!)
3. HSBC bank statements for pay (with the word "duplicate" on them, not stamped by HSBC)
4. Halifax e-ISA account transactions print out (this is stamped by Halifax Newbury branch) (People who have this account beware because you only get a statement every 6 months, they cannot give you statement in any other time. So please don't use this account for maintenance if you can, however, the caseworker seems to be happy with it).
5. Halifax e-ISA statement of investment (on Halifax paper)
6. Halifax e-ISA statement of balance on one particular day (on Halifax paper)
7. Master's degree, transcript, academic reference
8. Self assessment
9. Photocopies of all original documents.

Appointment time: 1015 12 April 2012
Time received docs: 1430 12 April 2012
BRP: waiting