We are currently having some issues with the company my husband and I are supposed to move with to Dubai/Abu Dhabi and we wanted to ask you for your advice.
We are a young couple, both 27 with no kids. My husband received a job offer from a British company, but we are currently living in the States (I am a Greencard holder) and are pretty happy there. The offer sounded quite exciting though. The recruiting agent, who found my husband (my husband works in a very specific field and there is only one person besides him who works in that field in Abu Dhabi) on the internet, made the offer sound really good. We told him our requests and he was always agreeing to them.
One request was, since I just had moved to the USA and was not able to work for a while there, that we would not have to take care of much for the move (paperwork) and that I would receive a work visa, so I could go ahead an the paperwork would not take up any time once I would find a job. The relocation agent told us that this would be the case and we (maybe naively) trusted him.
Much later, we found out that obviously I could not receive a work visa for the company. Furthermore apparently they have no idea of how to do the paperwork, so our paperwork got send back from Abu Dhabi to the States and we have tons of things to do now (legalization,….). We asked them to talk to our PRO or a lawyer in order to ask them about the visa questions we have, and they told us their PRO is a government employee and therefore we can’t contact them. Furthermore the recruiting agent got in touch with us and warned us of contacting any government agencies in our name since this would result in even more delays. We have no idea what is going on. Our moving date had to be postponed for a month all of a sudden (we were supposed to move in 4 days) because of the paperwork and I am basically waiting with my suitcases packed. We are lucky we still have our apartment!
We often try to get in touch with the company, which is a reputable British company, and nobody gets back to us for days and when they get back to us I feel they are kind of overworked. The money we should have received 1st of August, has just arrived partially today
There is no HR person working in the Emirates, everybody we deal with for moving is in London and they have no idea about anything.
We asked our recruiting agent before making the deal if they would give us a relocation agent who helps with finding an apartment and all the things there and he said that they would have professionals working for them. Now, we realized there is nobody there who really helps us and we still don’t even know if we should search in Dubai or AD for accommodation and nobody of the company can answer those questions…
The other issue is that we are living in a very very nice apartment in San Francisco. It is a two bedroom two bathroom, Victorian style, in the best region there (160 square meters). When we negotiated for the housing allowance, we told them we want something equivalent (we event showed them pics of our apartment), with a shared pool, either a house or apartment in top condition with a beautiful view and possibly parking. Since my husband’s company is in Abu Dhabi but he would have to commute quite often for projects to Dubai, we were told by the company to either look in Abu Dhabi downtown or Dubai Marina, since this is close to the highway. As a housing allowance they said 140 000 ADH would do for an apartment the way we described it. We can’t find anything for that price!
The main problem is, that we can’t trust the company anymore. We don’t think they are having any bad intentions, but they are totally incapable of handling our move.
I wanted to ask you now, what you think of their offer in general.
320.000 AED per year general salary
140.000 AED housing allowance (which is probably way too low)
14.000 AED moving allowance (they pay for tickets)
36.000 AED signing bonus
I think they also pay for temporary accommodation and flights there, plus once a year return flights home. Health insurance is the “global” version of the public insurance.
What do you think of the deal? Is it even worth going after all the problems? We want to give the adventure a chance, but we are not sure that the offer is good. Our recruiting agent said it is a really good deal for the country. Or do you think we should renegotiate?
Our goal is to live there very well, save up money and travel quite a bit.
Thank you so much for reading all of that
