Francais

If you don't mind spending 1p per minute to phone france from the UK, have a look at http://call1899.co.uk - instead odf having to dial a huge number first just dial 1899 followed by the French number, we have found it to very reliable. Even better, if you have a headset attached to your computer - try http://voipcheap.co.uk - this is brilliant - free calls to and from France! Also worth a look is http://skype.co.uk - Skype to Skype user is free but Skypeout is a tad expensive compared to other options. NO - I don't get a commssion from any of the above - I wish I did!! Tim  

I am using a Netgear 834g and the installation was simple - plug it in, open IE, type 192.168.0.1, enter the user name and password, default is admin/password, tell it yor are in France, enter your username and password to log on to Wanadoo and 30 seconds later it is online and working well. It really couldn't be simpler! HTH   Tim

I have been advised that the easiest way to start trading in France is to use my UK company. However, no one seems to be able to tell me how to go about this. So I have some questions that someone may have some answers for.   1 - Is the advice regarding a UK company true and if so, does it need to be a limited company or can it be a sole trader type entity? 2 - If I have a UK VAT number do I also need a SIRET number and if so how do I get it without registering an enetrprise in France? 3 - How do I go about registering for social payments and so on in France, again, without registering an enetrprise in France? 4 - Has anyone any actual experience of doing this? Thanks Tim

We (i.e. Tim & Lin) are looking at setting up a book swap internet site as we are both voracious readers with fairly catholic tastes. We have a fair book collection of our own (approximately 3,500 books) which we are looking at listing. 90% of our books are in excellent condition the balance are in good condition and we would expect that any books you want to exchange will be in the same condition. If we go ahead with this, how would you like to see the books listed? We could do a simple title/author/condition and/or we could do genre/title/author/condition - we would be interested to know what you think and if you can think of any other ways we could do the listing. At the moment we are thinking of charging 1€ per book including postage (unless it's a big heavy book in which case postage would be listed separately) if you haven't got a book to exchange. If you have a book (or books) to exchange, then we would be looking at 0.75€ per book. The charges are mainly to cover jiffy bags and so on - we aren't looking to get rich from this! We could extend this to include videos, dvd's and music CDs if there is a demand. Anyone interested? Would you pay 1€ or 0.50€ per book? We could possibly run an exchange club from home (Nueil les Aubiers) once a month - we certainly have the space! I will be resident in Nueil les Aubiers from next Sunday and if there is sufficient interest I could have a basic site up and running in a week or so - depending on France Telecom getting our phone line and broadband connection installed as promised! We would be really interested in what you think of the idea and welcome your comments. Rather than clog up the forum, if you are interested, please send me a pm.

Thanks for the ideas Liz. I am at the house later next week and I will try and find a supplier who may be able to help, I'll also post a picture of the little brute!   Tim

I was in Brico Depot last week and they seem to have quite a range of PVC and Wooden double glazed units at what seemed to me, to be reasonable prices. HTH Tim  

We have an Ideal 2001 oil fired boiler which is fitted with a KH2010 timer/programmer. I understand the principle operation of the boiler but the time has me completely baffled in that I cannot seem to set it so that the boiler swithes on/off with the time switch. Unfortunately when we bought the house last year we din't get the manuals for eother boiler or timer and a search of the Ideal website in the UK & France hasn't helped. I am fairly sure that thsi boiler is fairly popular as we saw similar models in other houses we looked at. It certainly works very weel, the house was lovely and warm all last week and it produces a reasoonable quantity of hot water. The timer has a multitude of settings, there is a small dial marked in degrees (max 55) with a hot water tap symbol, this I assume controls the hot water temperature. The is a large knob marked 3 - 9 with what I think is a radiator symbol and seems top control the radiator temperature. Thus far thus good - I think! There is also a switch with several symbols, sun, moon etc - this one I don't undertand. There are also three other settings, one is set with a flat blade screwdriver an may be marked with time, the other two have sun and moon symbols. Has anyone any ideas why the time clock seems not to work? There are movable Red & Blue pegs which seem to switch something on aff as the clock revolves but the boiler is always in an 'on' condition. I would like to set it so that when we are away from the house, it ticks over and keeps the house protected against frost, someone did tell me that it has a frost stat but I can't see any indication of that. What I could really do with is a site which has a downloadable manual, preferably in English as I don't think my french will cope with the complexity of the time. Failing that has anyone a manual, again in English which they could copy for me? Or, failing all that, does anyone have a similar timer and would be will to let me call them to talk about the operation of said timer? Thanks   Tim