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Montybird

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Everything posted by Montybird

  1. Have to agree, these are hard times and folks are looking for alternatives and compromising on lots of aspects of their life.  I for one am quite prepared to try something new and open to suggestions.  We've got our place (house with 2 gites) advertised for sale or swap on numerous sites and with agencies.  We're ideally looking to downsize back to UK but will consider anything smaller or even similar from the Vendée Northwards.  We've had quite a few enquiries for swapping but haven't yet found a suitable property. Although our place is priced sensibly for sale it's in a price bracket (500,000 €) with few buyers but competing with lots of 'similar priced gite property'.  Everyday I check several sites for property both for sale and wanted 'just in case'! Fortunately we're not desperate to sell and so prepared for the 'long-haul'! Another aspect of this is that I think immos/estate agents should wise-up, be more flexible and look-into this as offering a more 'complete service'.  We had an email enquiry from one of our immos recently and it started off  "Please don't think I'm crazy but...." she'd had one of their UK clients enquire about swapping their property with ours? Actually the property sounded very interesting to us but unfortunately we've heard nothing more... Typical!  I didn't think it was crazy at all and told her so - it's just another aspect of the way the whole 'property market' is evolving.  Perhaps it's a 'step-to-far' to expect them to adapt and evolve with the market conditions!
  2. Not sure about the Playstation capabilities but not long treated myself to an Xbox360 and although it has Sky and LoveFilm you can't access them here in France, just get the message "Not available in Your Area".  I googled if it was possible to hide your IP address on the XBox but all answers were in the negative. You could I guess download via your pc (using a Ex-Pat Shield or another IP address hider) and then watch via the pc with an HDMI cable but think you'd probably have to download rather than Stream unless you have a mega connection speed.
  3. Might be because the scart cable has come loose... worth a try!
  4. Who knows... I chased mine up yesterday via the English speaking Health helpline and although they confirmed my application has been received I was told it will take another 2 weeks before I get an official reply!
  5. Might be worth contacting Franklins removals  They are coming to collect a single piece of furniture from us tomorrow and take it back to UK.  Apparantly he's in the Confolens area today and coming to us near Perigueux tomorrow some time.
  6. Hello peeps, Hubby's having a problem with our ride on mower at the moment and just wondered if anyone out there had the same mower that might be able to help and shed some light on the problem. Unfortunately we do not have the manual for it. Came to start her up the other day only to find it wouldn't start. He's spent hours trying to sort it, seems to be an electrical problem. It's turning over ok so the battery's fine but just not firing up. Tried putting a new spark plug in, checked for a spark but doesn't appear to be one. Can anyone help?
  7. Hi angel, Have you considered buying something a little more independant to your parents.  I don't want to sound pessimistic but speaking from experience you can live too close to family.  We moved here 3 years ago with my parents and although we all got on famously in the UK it went pear shaped when we all tried to live together in the same property whilst renovating a large barn on our land.  We're all friends again now but it caused a lot of heartache for everyone for about 18 months after they left. The only other thing I'd add is definately to go for it - albeit in your own place - Bonne chance!
  8. Wow, looks very smart, bet she's well happy with it!
  9. Hi BOb, Jeff would love to take the cover off your hands.  His old one is full of holes after our new puppy tried to eat it.  Let me know if you've still got it and I'll give you a ring to arrange to pick it up.  Cheers!
  10. Just to add... Dafy Moto in Perigueux has moved premises, the new showroom is just behind the old one and the old one is now a Suzuki dealer.  Will be going into both shops next week to have a browse....  Dafy Moto had some lovely summer gear last year, particularly the 'Segura' range.  Always find it annoying though that the shops do not seem to stock the trousers to match the jackets.  I guess it's because French bikers don't bother with specialist biker trousers and just go out in their everyday jeans.  That's not for me until I become a more experienced biker.
  11. Is anyone else suffering a lack of enquiries, particularly for July Bookings? We use Chez Nous and I have recently put the gites on other 'freebie' sites including: HolidayHomeAds, Rent Property Direct, A Week or 2 in France and Lost In France. I've been looking at other similar properites on Chez Nous this morning and many appear to have most of the month of July available Has anyone used the Chez Nous 'special offers' with any success?
  12. Hi Bob, Funny you should post here as I was trawling the net the other day for ex-pat bikers in the Dordogne and came accross your website. Small world isn't it! Anyway, with regard to your bike registration problem we have a very similar tale to tell.  We've also been trying to for past 2 years to get our bikes registered here with no success.  Most of the problems down to our own ignorance of not realising about the horse power limit here, if only we'd known then what we know now.  We're probably gonna get shot down in flames for this by other 'holier than tho' members but we've finally come to the solution that the only way to keep our bikes on the road here is to get them re-registed back in the UK and take out UK Insurance.  We've got the insurance sorted with a company that offers 365 days a year european cover with breakdown assistance.  I can honestly say we tried everything to do this the 'legal French' way but there was just no way I could get mine registered.  Long story and I wont bore you with it all now.  At least were back riding them again now after 2 years of hassle. Hope we can all get together some time soon to share our experiences etc. Take care for now.
  13. [quote user="Cassis"] Sorry - for bank transfers or for having an account? [/quote] For having an account!  You can get an account with lower charges but you only get a cheque guarantee card and not a proper Visa cash card... too useful, especially for 24 hour petrol etc. They were also charging 0,50 cts every time you accessed your account on their website although, since January this year they went to great pains to advertise it's now 'free'.  I never used to be a pessimist but since living here...anyway when I checked with the guy at BNP to clarify this he confirmed it's free unless you actually do any on-line transactions.  That's very generous of them then???    
  14. Hi Lizzie, What a nightmare you've been having.  We thought we had problems with CA with whom we originally banked on arrival here over 2 years ago but nothing like that I'm glad to say.  We now bank with BNP but I must admit I'm really dissapointed with French banking on the whole.  We moved from CA to BNP because they refused to give us any sort of decent interest rate on the rather large sum we had then (I'm afraid it's nearly all been spent now, but that's another story).  A CA clerk told us at the time that because we weren't official 'French residents' it was illegal for them to offer us any kind of decent savings account.  Anyway, we promptly moved accounts after checking out a few different banks to somewhere that was more helpful.  They guy at BNP was initially very helpful but he's let me down on numerious occassions recently.  The last straw being that he promised to waiver the std monthly charge if I agreed to stay with him after threatening to go elsewhere... again.  He did say that he couldn't indefinately waiver it but would do it on a 3 monthly bases - i.e. I go back to him every 3 months to make a new agreement.  Well, that was 3 months ago, we've never had it waivered yet and are still paying the 7,30€ monthly charge, when I tackled him about it he just made flimsy appologies and promised to get it sorted.  He's on holiday for the rest of this month (surprise, surprise) so I'm going to tackle him again early September but I don't hold out much hope of success.  It seems that you're just not valued as a customer here, but I guess that's pretty normal in France... C'est la vie!!!
  15. I have been looking to purchase one of these for a couple of months.  I can't believe how expensive they are here in France... over 600€ new and sellers on ebay are asking almost as much for second hand models.  Anyway, I've managed to find the model I wanted 'Domena SP4100' from Cooper Sewing Machines Ltd in the UK and they are posting me one at only £189.95 + £9 postage.  I thought this was pretty good as another UK company quoted me £199.99 + £60 postage.  I have no connection with either company btw just thought it was a good buy and other forum users might be interested.  
  16. yep, we had the same problem as well.  Replaced the whole valve mechanism with brass types purchased from BricoDepot, about 8 euro's for the pack.
  17. Thanks for pointing that out to me SusanAH and you're quite right, slip-up on my aprt with our website, I'd forgotten to tell my friend who looks after it that we'd changed the price again.  I've just emailed him asking him to update it again.  Bet I'll be popular!!!
  18. I'm back and calmed down now...  the guests have gone out for the afternoon, it's lovely to have the place to ourselves again for a couple of hours.  I don't think I'm really cut out for this business... either that or I'll have to toughen up.  I guess I feel a bit mean about the fan, we're also on Tempo tarif so we're probably on the cheapest rate anyhow but at the end of the day we're trying to run a business here not a charity.  We are putting the rates up next year by just under 25% so that should cover these extra's and also the Taxe de Sejour that I'd completely forgotten about until our Marie reminded me the other week!!!  Wonder what'll come next?
  19. This is our first year of gite rental and we thought we'd prepared ourselves for the trials and tribulations of running gite(s) but some things just really niggle at you.  We provide all linen and towels, dishwasher, washing machine etc etc.  Our prices I believe are quite resonable for our area (£450 for main weeks) for a 3 bedroom gite.  I left a fan in the utility room and the first guests seen it and asked if they could borrow it to use in the gite.  We of course said yes but then realised they'd got it on 24 hours a day for the rest of their 2 week stay.  So, we thought we'd buy a few of these fans and hire them out at 4€ a week each.  The cost is more to cover the extra electricity used more than anything else.  Anyway, we put this into practice with our second lot of guests and when they asked for a fan the father of the family pulled a face and asked "how much are they to buy"?  They did hire a fan that night but then this morning promptly told us they'd been out yesterday and bought 2 fans and we could have ours back!  Also, it's really been bugging me that they've had the washing machine on constantly (sometimes 2 or 3 times a day) and I'm sure there's only 2-3 items of clothing being washed at a time.  I have put a notice up in the utility now asking guests to try to use the machine after 10pm (off-peak electricity) when possible and to try to do 'full loads' but this has gone unheaded as the machine is on again right now.... Arghhhh!!!  What more can we do, or are we being too petty?
  20. Just to update.. 186 total hits with a few enquiries but nobody actually bid.  Oh well, think I'll leave it for now and stick with Chez Nous.
  21. Hi, I'm ebaying our gite at the mo.  Had 121 hits, with 6 watchers, about 6 enquiries so far, no bookings yet but have 1 more day left so fingers crossed.   
  22. You could always try your local impots office to ask for assistance completing your form; try ringing first for an appointment and if your French isn't up to it (like mine), you could ask if anyone can speak English to help you.
  23. Many thanks for recommendations although I think I'll start with downloading music to start with as I haven't got a clue about bittorrent or bittorrent clients.  All sounds very technical.  I've been checking out the different sites that you've all suggested and me heads buzzing with jargon now!!!
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