RebeccaB1984 Bee

At the end of May I sent several thousand pounds via a bank transfer to pay several years missing National Insurance from abroad (I live in an EU country and am only eligible to pay Class 3 so it was expensive). It's coming up to 8 weeks now, and i've heard absolutely nothing and my NI record is not updated and still shows those years as unpaid. Obviously I'm starting to worry. I had previously paid a few hundred pounds to cover one year and I received a letter pretty fast (about 4 weeks) regarding that, and now with this large amount i've heard nothing at all! What to do? Must I call them? It's extremely expensive to call from abroad unfortunately, each time costs 25+ euros due to the long queues. Should I be worried? I am 99% sure I used to correct reference and details because I have done it before with a much smaller amount and it ended okay. As a side note I think it's quite alarming that the only way to pay NI from abroad is via a bank transfer that gives no real receipt, rather than a payment through a website or some other means where you can easily choose which years you're paying for rather than blindly sending money into the ether and hoping that they select the correct missing years (and then when they don't I still have to make an expensive phone call) Thanks for any reassurance or guidance! Thanks

Can delete this post, I was able to fix the problem over the phone already Thank you (The amount is meant to be 907.40)

I live abroad and last year applied to pay voluntary class 3 contributions. Today I received a letter asking me for 685.50 for the year April2023- April 2024 The reason I am confused is because of the amount - when I look back at previous years the amount is 824 pounds for a full missing year. Why is the amount for this most recent year lower? I am concerned because I made two voluntary bank transfers for previous years of much smaller amounts for 2 years where I had worked in the UK and only had to pay back for a few weeks, and I sent a letter by post explaining which years they were for, and now I'm wondering if someone has just reduced the amount for the most recent year which was not what I had planned? I was assured that they would allocate the money I sent via bank transfer to the correct years. Yet they still show as unpaid. It is very difficult to me to call from abroad - I always end up in a long queue and rarely get through, and the phone call costs me 20-40 euros each time. Thanks for any help!

I'm happy to see Admins replying here, However, I was informed that if we are paying from OVERSEAS banks then there is no 18 digit reference number and we just put out NI number and surname (as shown in the opening post) as the reference. I hope this is true as that is what I have done. My record still does not show that I have paid, but it's only been a few days. How long does it take to show on my NI record that I have paid?

So after a year or more of trying to figure out what to do, today I received a letter confirming I am eligble to pay Class 3 contributions, I live abroad right now and wanted to pay for the years 2006-2007 and 2012-2013, as these are years I worked in the UK but evidently missed a few weeks so did not qualify for the full year. After talking to a nice guy via the website chat, he told me to simply transfer what I wanted to pay with the bank details So I did this. How will they know what I am paying for? As in, which years? I feel like i've just blindly sent money to a UK account with no instruction as to which years I am paying for, since I am not paying ALL of the missing years. When do I get a receipt or an acknowledgement that they received the money? Does anyone know how long it takes for my records to update so that I can see my pension forecast after completing the payement?