Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

droopsnout

Have a great time, Mw!

mioliere

Hi everyone. I am finally online here in France after a mega-battle with France Telecom! They started the process on 5th March, hit a technical problem that day and did nothing about it until I phoned the day after we arrived, on 25th March, to ask why the engineer hadn't turned up - all in all, it's taken them 56 days and nearly driven me mad! Anyway, I am now back in the 'real' world and it's been great to Skype the family and so on.

Thanks to you, Donny-gal, for keeping touch by email - I've been able to use a friend's laptop about once a week to catch up on emails and it's been great to hear from you.

Life here has been challenging to say the least! The worst problem was that caused by France Telecom, but we have had heating problems (and it was freezing when we arrived!), our hot water tank had to be replaced, I picked up a horrid virus which lasted for ten days, and my BIL and his wife decided to visit for a few days when all that was going on! We are a lot more organised now, the weather is better and we are just settling into some sort of routine - DH has some work lined up and can fit that in with working on the house and now that I am back online, I can do my own work. I'm missing the children and grandchildren like mad but, being able to Skype them this week has been great and has made a real difference.

Anyway, I hope you are all well and enjoying great weather, wherever in the world you all are!

Kathy

droopsnout

Welcome back, Kathy, and I'm sure we all wish you good luck in your new home. In these big moves, something is always going to happen to disrupt things. In our case, our belongings were in storage whilst we found our house, and when they were delivered, half of them had been left behind in the UK, and a second delivery was required. So we had a table top but no legs, a computer keyboard but no monitor, etc.

It took over a fortnight before the second delivery. We were using garden furniture to sit in and eat from, and caravan cushions to sleep on.

But all worked out in the end, and there are no regrets.

Now, what are you doing about cars? That's usually interesting over here!

mioliere

Hi Droopsnout - sounds like you had a challenging start, too! Thanks for the welcome back.

As far as cars are concerned, we drove ours over from the UK - a car and a van. The drive down was fun - I got lost just outside Caen and DH had to double back and come and rescue me! I stuck to him like glue after that and the rest of the journey was fine. The busiest part of the entire trip was the drive to the ferry port at Portsmouth! French roads and autoroutes are a real pleasure to drive on after the congestion of the UK!

We haven't done anything about the cars yet but have been given the number of a local chap who re-registers cars, so we'll be registering them both here I think. What did you do?

Well, the house needs a lot of work but we have made about half of it habitable and more or less comfortable, the weather is great at the moment, we've planted up tubs of flowers, have no TV but don't miss it that much. That might change when the summer has finished! We can listen to UK radio on the PC, which is great, and I get the daily paper emailed to me, so at least I feel in touch with the rest of the world now!

Anyway, I'd better go and see if DH needs a cuppa!

Kathy

droopsnout

We came to France with a car that was, at the time, six years old, and we didn't want to change it (as we really liked it) and we probably couldn't have afforded to, either.

So we had new headlamps fitted (to shine on the correct side of the road), put the car through its Contrôle Technique and re-registered, which was, for us at the time, a simple and straightforward process, despite some of the scare stories on the forums.

A friend currently going through this process tells me it is no longer as simple, largely because, she says, the local DRIRE has closed down, and she has to get a Certificat de Conformite from the manufacturer. Since that manufacturer is Citroën, you'd think it wouldn't be necessary, but ... And it is costing a lot, and the price of their new headlamps is quite frightening, too, as it seems they are just not available at the local "casses" (breakers' yards).

Our car, having reached almost 13 years of great service, did start to cost a bit too much to maintain, and sadly we did get rid of it last August and bought a new car here. Is it as good? No. But we had no choice, really. It is far more economical, and I hope we'll have few bills for a number of years.

seven-day-weekend

droopsnout wrote: »

We came to France with a car that was, at the time, six years old, and we didn't want to change it (as we really liked it) and we probably couldn't have afforded to, either.

So we had new headlamps fitted (to shine on the correct side of the road), put the car through its Contrôle Technique and re-registered, which was, for us at the time, a simple and straightforward process, despite some of the scare stories on the forums.

A friend currently going through this process tells me it is no longer as simple, largely because, she says, the local DRIRE has closed down, and she has to get a Certificat de Conformite from the manufacturer. Since that manufacturer is Citroën, you'd think it wouldn't be necessary, but ... And it is costing a lot, and the price of their new headlamps is quite frightening, too, as it seems they are just not available at the local "casses" (breakers' yards).

Our car, having reached almost 13 years of great service, did start to cost a bit too much to maintain, and sadly we did get rid of it last August and bought a new car here. Is it as good? No. But we had no choice, really. It is far more economical, and I hope we'll have few bills for a number of years.

Had the same trouble in Spain, with a Seat (made in Barcelona!).

Glad to say it now has taken Spanish Citizenship for a cost of 500€, plus the cost of changing the lights.

It is now eleven years old and has done 160,000 MILES (not kilometres) and is still going strong. Cars do not rust here so we are hoping it will reach it's 15th birthday and 200,000 miles as we can't afford a new one until 2014 when I get the lump sum from my Local Authority Pension.

mioliere

Hi Droopsnout and thanks for the info re re-registering cars. My DH has a Ford Courier van (W-reg) which looks very French (!), and I have an R-reg BMW 520 (which, so far, has never failed it's MOT!) so we need to look into the Certificat de Conformite for each of them. Neither of them gives us any trouble so we would be loathe to part with them. They currently just have 'beam-benders' on the headlights. We'll be looking into re-registering soon. With the dreadful trouble we have had with France Telecom, I'm not looking forward to that!

Kathy

seven-day-weekend

The main trouble we had with re-registing our car was with the towbar. In Spain you have to have 'papers' for every 'addition' to your vehicle, such as a towbar, bull bars, running board, trailer etc.

Well being British our car hadn't got any 'papers' for its towbar. The fact that it was fitted in the Seat fsactory in Barcelona was immaterial,- no papers, no pass.

So we had the towbar professionally taken off.

Then we took it back to the ITV (MOT) station. It failed.

Reason? We had no 'papers' to say we'd had the towbar professionally taken off!:mad::eek::rotfl:

We had to go back to the gargae where they took it off and he gave us a letter to say they had taken the towbar off and charged us 100 euros for the privilege.:mad:

We were dreading that they would say the same about the roof bars (the integral ones also fitted in the Seat factory) but they didn't thank goodness.

Anyway all done and dusted now!

Savvy_Sue

:rotfl: And I thought French bureaucracy was bad ...

seven-day-weekend

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

:rotfl: And I thought French bureaucracy was bad ...

Sue, it is one of the things that drives me mad about Spain. Nothing in the world of Spanish Bureaucracy is simple. They never have one form when seven complicated ones will do, or in one office when they have three, and you have to do most things in person.

For example, when we applied for our Residency cards - we had to go to one office for the forms, fill them in, go to another office to hand them in, go home, come back a week later to have our fingerprints taken, get a receipt to pay, go to the bank and pay, come back to the fingerprint office again to hand in the stamped receipt, go home again, come back a week later to collect your card.

This is assuming you have the right 'papers' to start the process with as everyone will tell you something different.

And bearing in mind it is a two-hour drive each way for us.

Don't even MENTION importing the car! The saga I told you above with the towbar was only one part of the process!