barryandpat

Hi, I can recomend a friend of ours, Kevin Pope (KPC Service) He sorted my computer and adsl problems, he talks a lot but knows a lot. email   [email protected]  0549506680 tell him Barry told U Wendy's dad. Barry

Hi, We are vacating a large 3 bed house on 11th march to move to a semi derilict house in 17. Where is the Orb or Aude valleys? Barry and Pat

Hi, I can answer only from my dealings with my bank. The bank CA just seems interested in covering their money lent to the client, so life insurance for the amount lent is all that is required. If I die the insurance pays the bank, they are not interested in selling property to get their money back, that is not their function in life. Once the mortgage is paid after the full term thats the end of it, there are no bonuses or thank you's, the house is yours and the inheritance is left to a notaire to sort out. Notaires seem to take a more responsible attitude than a UK solicitor, in that they will advise a bank if a bad deal is attempted by a seller and purchaser. Maybe someone else has different experiences? Barry and Pat

Hi, We wanted a no frills ADSL connection, mainly because we are in a fringe area, and we have free-to-air SKY anyway. We were quoted 24.95 euros per month from wanadoo, and after a few weeks we went back and said a friend was getting the same service for 19.95 euros, so they changed it immediatly, its been like that for over a year now. We had serious problems when orange took over with popups and ads, we reinstalled both XP,and Norton antivirus / firewall, and have had no further problems.  Barry and Patricia 

Hi, We came to France in Jan 2005 following our daughter who moved with her family in 2004. I was 65, my wife 62, and I just started recieving state pension, we thought that it would be a good idea to rent a house, and we found one at 500 euros a month, perfect, large, renovated to a modern standard. After approximately 2 years we will have paid out 12,000 euros. So-- we asked our bank, CA, if it was possible to buy our own home, this personal manager is empoyed to deal with english clients, as he has a good grasp of english, he went through our expenditure and told us our limit was a 60,000 euros purchase price. We started looking at the lower end of the market and found that there is an immense choice of properties from 10,000 up to 100,000 euros, and being DIY enthusiasts since 1963 we thought we could take on anything, within reason. We finally chose a house at 13,000 euros plus fees, and needing lots of work giving us a 100% mortgage of 46,000 euros, this starts in March 2007 when I will be 67, and for 15 years taking me to 82 years old. I will have to pay life insurance and the total payment will cost me 400 euros per month. The bank say that I would have been ok up to the age of 85, so I have another three years left if we run out of money for the restoration. We will have lots of the problems that forum contributers have had, but after living here for 2 years we have some idea of who to ask and which departments to go to, its very exciting and we look forward to next year. I hope that our experiences can help someone else, in the same way others have helped us.  Barry and Patricia