Martin963

Gosh yes, Claire, she was such a brilliant mod, but whose patience (which appeared to be inexhaustible) suddenly gave out I seem to remember. I think it was her that we nearly once went to see - she was en route from us to one of the TV transmitters in the Auvergne that I periodically made a pilgrimage to see. But sadly she was away the one time we might have managed it.

Was it chris pp who had a lot of run ins with his local hunters? Lovely to hear from AnOther/Ernie. Glad you're OK. We had some fun on the satellite section I seem to remember, you with your fleet of Sky boxes!

I'm fairly sure I was posting in late 1998, having joined in the summer when we started looking for a house. As others have said, famous names from the past include Coco (who used to get into terrible scrapes on here), mazan, Teamedup (who of course until recently was still posting on here under a different name), Anton Redman, Ron in the Aveyron, SwissBarry, etc etc. And a special mention for Cooperlola, one of the nicest people on the planet. I felt I was quite an old hand by 2001, when I was regularly advising (along with Mazan) folk on getting British TV in France, and occasionally on how to get French TV in England, and why the fact the French used SECAM/System L for TV transmission back then made things so difficult! Sadly the decay of the forum hasn't been pretty as it's turned in on itself. I suppose everyone looks at Facebook nowadays.... Sadly I'm not sure it serves much of a function now....

Yes, I can see it's a casse-tête for you. As I say, I'd just be very wary of anything with the Nordnet name in it, of course they may have turned over a new leaf, but..... When we were in 24 we had the same problem as you, ie our village was not scheduled for fibre (as far as I know they still haven't got it). Hence we went down the 4G mains-router boulevard (in fact we pioneered it locally, and by the time we left I'd advised/installed it in a dozen French foyers (some friends, some via word of mouth from friends to their friends I'd never met!). We found the SOSH offres quite good enough (as they ride on Orange's network the coverage was the best overall) but we also used SFR which in our case had a weaker signal but greater allowance. For €20 odd and only monthly contract it worked very well in a dedicated 4G mains router. I'm no particular fan of Musk, but I wish him well in this particular instance. as anyone who throws sand at the French and the EU regulations gets my support.

Mon cher Harnser, it's clear you don't know this bit of Devon (and a large surrounding area). EVERYTHING is on poles here too, in fact more so than in 24 where we had our house for twenty years, during which time EDF/Enedis buried most of the local 3 phase distribution - none of our low tension stuff is buried. We too have falling trees and outages, and lorries that take out the phone lines/fibre connection, although my generator admittedly has been put to one side in the last two years as we now have a Tesla house-battery, but I am indeed aware of the sort of problems you face, as we face them here too. And no 5G before you ask, France is miles ahead with 5G coverage. Like you I would find financial operations difficult after perhaps two weeks, but a few days? I'm not familiar with email card transaction, but our basic bills would still be paid internet or no internet. I can see though that if your mobile signal went down 2 weeks before the storm then it did make life extremely difficult, was this weather related or just the most appalling concatenation of technical failure? We had a lot of trees round us in 24, and indeed do here in Devon. The main problem though is finding a path for the satellite signals to come through, particularly as I need the arc from 28E through to 5W. Like you I don't know how well Starlink performs with obstructions, friends near here have it as they don't have the same fibre connection that most of us have, and I know that they were muttering that they needed to find a better position for the dish as the house was partially obstructing their signal. That said they were getting speeds of 70 Mbps by just plonking their Starlink dish on the ground. And here in Britain it's £75 a month, whereas in France you can I believe get it for €49. How can they justify such a difference? I'll try and find out how our friends are getting on and what sort of installation they have.

Of course if it's genuinely a new and better service from a new satellite then it might be worth trying. But over the years of reading nordnet reviews I'd be very careful about using them, I don't know if it's still the case but for ages there was a clear pattern that new customers got an excellent service for the first three months (which was the period where you could wriggle out) and then the speeds would collapse, leaving you locked into a contract that had another 21 months to run. Is the internet really that important? Are storms on this scale going to happen so frequently that your life is going to be constantly and completely disrupted? I must admit that *some* backup is comforting, here in Devon we have a couple of 4G routers, and when the fibre to our village was cut off by a lorry (that was too high and which stripped the fibre from the poles) we were glad to have an alternative, as it took BT nearly two weeks to repair things (not their fault, the road had to be closed and it's an A road). A 4G (or 5G) router is far more reliable than tethering to a phone, although of course if the base station is deprived of power it's not going to function.

Interesting - I checked the French price and as you say €40 a month which is very competitive. Put my address in in Britain and it's still £75 a month. Quelle arnaque!

Interesting that it was used dans la langue de Shakespeare as well, thanks for that. As I said, it just wasn't a phrase I'd heard in use on French news reports until this summer, maybe the French have borrowed it back!

Actually I think it was the Delphine Jubillar case where I first started noticing that they kept having to add that her companion was "innocent until proven otherwise".

Used to be called "under-tow" in my young days, on holiday in Dorset as a child. But I don't remember until this year or last the phenomenon being so widely and universally called "baïnes" on French TV reports. Another new phrase on TV reports this year seems to be "sur le quivive" with regard to the pompiers and the forest fires, again in more than 24 years of daily watching of French TV news I don't remember that phrase cropping up. (And another thing, French TV have suddenly started making a point of ending reports on suspected criminals with the reminder that they are innocent until proven guilty. My guess is that someone somewhere high up made a formal complaint about the way hitherto French TV reports could sully the name of a suspect with no stated presumption of innocence). I digress.......

Also annoying (at least to me) was the BBC Radio capitulating - in the early 1990s - on the question of which way faders should fade, trashing decades of BBC exceptionalism, (of which I was proud). Oh well, keep polishing those double enders!

Why make it so "ciblé"? Why not allow an option to look at the national picture? Why restrict an app so tightly? Why should the app be entitled to check my geoloaction, some people (although I'm not that bothered about it) don't want snooping of this sort?

Frustratingly - and perhaps typical of "the French attitude" - I finally got it (the app) to admit (after several attempts) that I am not entitled to download or use the app as I am not resident in France. In other words it's geo-blocked. I do honestly wonder what goes on in the heads of some of these people...... And it's a stupid stupid restriction as I can still look at the info on the RTE website, it's just less easy to access quickly. I was amused to see that traffic lights won't be exempted from power-cuts in France, that should be good for a laugh as a spectator sport..... I might add that even on this very cold morning here in Britain (-5 deg C in Devon) we're still exporting power to France to keep their lights on.......

I expect Hidalgo is planning at this moment how to tax the poor little beasts......

Sadly it seems that Boursorama only offer bank accounts for people abroad provided they are French: ""La sélection d'un pays de résidence autre que France est réservée aux ressortissants français à l'étranger."" (I'd got some way through the process before it came up with that message, it's not clear when you start the sign up process).

Just answered my own question - the application form seems to allow one to choose Royaume Uni. I shall investigate further - thanks for the tip off NormanH.

But does Boursourama allow people who no longer have a French address to open an account?

Truly awful, there are some sick people around. Watching French TV though one sees more and more incidents of this sort where Mayors are attacked, often in public places with apparently no concern or worry on the part of the perpetrator about being witnessed or even filmed. One gets the impression that the increase in hassle - from low level insults and incivilités right through to being <<grièvement blessé>> is putting a lot of current Mayors off seeking re-election when the time comes. One can't blame them.

Thanks NormanH. Interesting idea about "virtual cards", I saw mention of them but thought "too complicated for me", as would be linking my phone to the account. But I'll investigate further, it's a fascinating idea. Sadly LCL are refusing to budge from these eye-watering charges (in spite of which they said they'd like to speak to me on the phone, but when they tried they then claimed that they weren't allowed to ring numbers in Britain, which seems a bit ironic when they're trousering €60 a quarter from me henceforth). Talking to French friends the reputation of LCL is at rock bottom, slow, blundering, out of date and expensive. It'll take a couple of months to empty the account but I shall consider myself well out of their grasp.

I get the impression that this problem hasn't affected anyone on here, tant mieux, but an agreement has now been concluded and the TF1 stable will be back with all five channels on TNTsat and Canalsat as of Monday 7th Nov.

Thanks Lehaut. From what I can gather the "no limits" ties in with what you've found. I did enquire yesterday both from Wise and Revolut as to how they treat larger sums coming in - forcement the money from the sale of our house in 2019 is not an insignificant sum. I offered to send a pdf of the sale agreement to them in advance, but they seemed happy to review any incoming payments on an as-and-when basis and ask questions on legitimacy as they arise.

Thanks Lehaut. Presumably there's no limit on incoming amounts (as I will have to do moving money from LCL to Revolut) provided it stays in the same currency? I've also set up a Wise account, and interestingly LCL who first said that I'd just have to lump the new charges are now saying they'll consult higher up to see if they can bring the new charges back down nearer the old. Clearly a bit of Anglo-Saxon intransigence has had an effect, I told them I was off and would start moving money and it's concentrated a few minds. They're due to phone me to negotiate later today. Awful dinosaur of a bank though, at the moment I can't do transfers to Britain or Belgium IBANs without applying and then waiting for a courrier with a code to enter on the internet. With huge charges and out of date procedures no wonder so many complain about LCL.

Update - silly me, just unfamiliarity. I've found the way to open the € account. Steep learning curve for those of us not so familiar with smartphones!

Bother! I've opened my Revolut account, which has appeared in sterling as I expected. However, I can't see an option for creating a € account into which to transfer the funds in LCL. I rather think I've completely misunderstood the concept of Revolut. With Ferratum you could have separate accounts in separate currencies, I'm rather afraid I've got the wrong end of the stick with Revolut. Unless anyone can give me guidance?

This thread has been a great help, but I wonder if perhaps one of you kind folk could expand a bit to my case...? I've just been hit by eye watering higher charges by LCL, of which I've been a customer for over thirty years. Instead of €12 a quarter as up to now, they are going to charge me 2 x €30 per quarter, on top of the debit card + assurance, bringing my annual charge for a bank account that I no longer really need to close to €400 per year. We sold our house back in 2019, and without going into great detail part of the funds involved are still with LCL. The given reason for LCL's new higher charges is that the accounts are not in daily use and I'm considered a foreigner now that we're not in the EU. I would like to move the money to somewhere else, and the mention of Revolut above sounds good. But I have a couple of worries, after a fairly irksome experience with Ferratum Bank a few years ago. (I'm still not sure if I think Ferratum were on the level or not, and luckily had committed only a couple of grand to them). Based as I am entirely in Britain, can I actually have a € account? I don't want to change the euro proceeds of the house into £s but am not sure if that's how it works. Do I start with a £ Revolut account and then open an associated € one? How safe is Revolut? I see it's covered by the bank guarantee but is based in Lithuania? Awfully close to the Russian border if push came to shove? Any advice or alternatives gratefully received. I'd really have preferred to open another account in France with an outfit less determined to treat me as a vache au lait, but with no French address now I imagine that's nigh on impossible. Thanks folks.