frexpt
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Posts posted by frexpt
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Unfortunately that procedure won't work if the vehicle is not already registered in France, but the principle is still the same regarding residence of owner.
Thanks, but unfortunately, the car is presently UK registered! -
A shame to have to resurrect this post, as I thought we had it cracked. Jut just been into the local prefecture to start the process, only to be told that we can't register the car, as we cannot declare that our principal residence is in France. The lady I dealt with wasn't the most helpful I've come across in France, but she was quite insistent on the non-residency issue, which was, of course, the point of the question in the first place.
I cannot see why this should be a problem..........any further thoughts, please?
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I agree totally with what you say in your second paragraph, but I also think that the article pretty much confirms what I was trying to say..........providers of personal pension plans will do nothing unless a lifestyle option has been selected. The nomination of a retirement date on its own will trigger claim documentation near the magic date, but there will be no active management of an individual plan before that time in the absence of a specific request for a lifestyler-type arrangement.
If someone contacts his or her pension company to let them know that retirement is planned at particular age, one would hope that the lifestyler options would be explained and offered at that time. However, many (in particular "direct") product providers only give out information on the features of their plans and make it clear that they do not offer advice specific to the enquirer.........they simply cannot afford to do so.
The stakeholder pension that the original post referred to was a low-cost personal pension plan forced on the financial services industry by the present UK government[6], with the noble motive of looking to give the investor better value for money through strictly controlled maximum charges.....good for votes, as well! The sad fact is that these plans are not cost-effective for the industry (providers or advisers) to market or service without levying additional fees direct to the client. Relatively few clients are willing to pay for the advice, so, rather than solving a problem, the culture of neglect and "head in the sand" approach has been exacerbated.
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I may be a little out of touch, as it is now well over a year since I retired as an IFA, but I don't believe that has ever been an onus on a product provider (insurance company or bank) to reduce exposure to risk in the latter years of a pension plan, unless a "lifestyle" option has been selected.
A fund manager will have an obligation to manage a particular investment or pension fund within certain risk parameters, so from time to time, he may invest more defensively or aggressively on behalf of all of his investors. It is the responsibility of the financial adviser (e.g. IFA or bank adviser), or the client himself, to ensure that he (the client) is invested in the correct type of fund to reflect (amongst other things) the stage of his working life and his acceptance of exposure to risk.
A good working relationship with a financial adviser is literally worth its weight in gold, particularly in difficult times as we have seen in recent years and also in the run up to retirement. Goodness knows, I spent many years firefighting the results of this common misunderstanding on behalf of clients, who believed that their interests were genuinely being looked after by their investment or pension provider.
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Thanks for that, but I think that page goes on to say that TVA (or VAT in our case) would be payable in the country of residence, which for us, is the UK. Nevertheless, I spy a grey area, so I think a decent length road-trip will be on the cards when we are next in France. We still have some time before our six months expire
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That was all very helpful...many thanks to everyone. The car was imported into the UK from Germany, registered, then shipped immediately to France. We will be coming up to six months soon, so will need to make a decision.Although four years old, the car has only done 5,000 kms. Have I seen something somewhere about cars with less than 6,000 kms being subject to a higher rate of import duty?
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Thanks and sorry....I was thinking out loud! If it hadn't been possible to register the car in France, being non-resident, I was thinking of the problems that might exist in keeping it UK legal.
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Can't find a definitive answer for this, so would be grateful if anyone has a suggestion.We are UK resident and my wife has a UK registered LHD car which we would like to leave at our place in France. The car is already Euro compliant with a cert of conformity, but currently has UK MOT, tax and insurance. As non-resident in France, is it going to be possible to register this car there? We would not envisage needing to bring the car back to the UK.My concern is that when the next UK MOT is due, the Euro set up of the car is going to create difficulties.
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Thanks for the reply. We've now put down some very cheap and cheerful cord from the Brico ourselves. The stuff was like paper and easy to cut, but lies pretty well. We are just giving this place a lift as it is going on the market to (hopefully) sell in the Spring. If we were looking to do so for ourselves, then undoubtedly the way to do so would be just as you have done. We are heading back to the UK next week and expect to return laden with decent quality paint and other materials for our new house. We are also looking at sourcing some of the furniture and white goods from the south coast. A friend near here did that and then just hired a van to hop over and bring everything back. Even with the van hire and ferry crossing, there was a significant saving on French prices.
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We are just about to put our house on the market, but I was wondering whether anyone had experience of Dutch or Belgian agencies selling property in France? I have found a few websites, but any one of these would be bit of a shot in the dark at this point.
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Thanks for that, all working well, just wish the keys were in the sq,e plqces!!!!!!
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Merry Christmas to Everyone!
My son has bought me a very useful French keyboard for my PC. However, having attached it and downloaded a MS driver and told it that it is French, it still thinks it's a QWERTY keyboard. I am using XP Home edition. Anybody know what I have or have not done
Many thanks
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[quote user="Théière"]
[quote user="sweet 17"]Isn't the staining part of the er.............character?[/quote]
I thought so too, but then again, if you have an open fire yes, with a cast iron log burner it looks a little strange IMO.
That looks like a good range of products for restoring the stonework, I had resonable success with foam type oven cleaner. (cheap leader price stuff) The worst of the black came off easily and with each successive application the stonework got lighter. You need a lot of paper towel to wipe up though.
No it did not damage the limestone, before anyone asks. [:)]
[/quote]
I think that there is a distinction to be made between "character" features and the filthy state of this fireplace that has been caused by years of neglect. A little gentle restoration to bring a lovely feature up to the standard of the rest of the property is what is needed here and yes, we are installing a woodburner, so Théière's observation was absolutely spot on!
Many Thanks to all for the suggestions!
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The house we have just bought has a lovely grey stone fireplace, which I think is limestone. The previous owners have burned an open log fire for the past 10 years and the smoke stained surround looks to be pretty ingrained. Any suggestions, please, on what to use to restore the surround or at least reduce the staining?
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[quote user="Albert the InfoGipsy"][quote user="frexpt"]Albert.......Oops, didn't read the "apart from" first time round.....[/quote] Don't worry, it may not be the right page for your deal anyway. They seem to have a number of similar, but different, 'free international' offers. And why don't quotes work properly now? Is cos I is IE8?[/quote]
Quite right, it wasn't the right page, but no matter, it pointed me in the right direction!
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For "Lies" also read "Fobbing Off". The amount of bull we have been fed in an effort to deflect an awkward enquiry beggars belief. I still can't get over being told that I'd be better putting it in writing and don't worry about the letter being in English. I did so and our phone and internet were promptly cut off. We then received a demand for the full remaining amount of the 12 month contract. To be fair, I did receive an email warning of the disconnection, but rang the Englsh helpine (sales and tech) immediately. I forwarded the email to one of our aforementioned helpful operatives and was told that the email definitely didn't originate from Orange and was probably from a spammer. The following day we were disconnected.
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Albert.......Oops, didn't read the "apart from" first time round.....
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That's brilliant and the recent invoices make perfect sense, thank you! Nevertheless, it would be useful if the FT/Orange support staff were made aware of their own terms and conditions!
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I have no issue with the English helpline staff personally, who have given all the correct assurances, but are obviously labouring under an archaic system. Having spoken to both French & English, it is obvious that there is very little communication between the two departments as they appear to hold two completely differing sets of facts. Our (probably) mutual Irish friend has admitted that there is very little that their side of things can do. The clear inference is that messages passed on from that side of things to the French side may or may not be actioned, but the English helpline has no power to chase things through.
As an aside, out of choice we would not be calling Indonesia, but we have a daughter backpacking that part of the world. Having rung her to ask whether she would like us to pay for a flight back to France for Christmas, we were met with an almost-polite refusal. For some reason, she would prefer to remain in beautiful tropical Bali, but she did suggest that we might like to send her the equivalent amount of the airfare as an additional Christmas present!
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Further down it specifically says that calls to Asia, apart from Oz & NZ cost 91c a minute.
Thanks for that and I would be in full agreement, other than for the fact that we have told otherwise by the helpline and never been charged for the many calls we have made to Australia! Seems to me that, at best, there are inconsistencies in the system..........such as it is!
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In a moment of what must have been mid-summer madness, we signed up to a France Telecom/Orange telephone and internet package at home. We have had to query the amount of our bill every month since July and generally enjoyed nothing but problems with the overall service, both from the English "Helpline" and the French 3900 "Customer Services" (both departments merely existing in name only so far as I can see.)From the outset, we opted to pay an additonal 7€ per month for "international illimité", but did not actually receive any free calls until October. Two invoices totalling more than 600 Euros have finally been refunded.However, this month, we find that we have been charged (rather handsomely) for calls to an Indonesian landline. Now, the last time I looked, Indonesia was overseas and we are still being assured by Orange that all overseas calls are free of charge.Having been fed so much contradictory information in the past 5 months, I find it difficult to take anything they tell me at face value.I was wondering whether anyone was familiar with this package and might be able to clarify whether any countries are chargeable or should all international calls be free?Many thanksPS Excuse me whilst I scream.........just checked our online account and we have just been re-credited another 316€....can't make out why for the life of me, it doesn't appear to relate to our Indonesian calls, but every little helps!
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Thanks very much for the suggestions. A pity that the Carpet Man is so far away, as he looks to be just the ticket. We'll try the St Maixent Deco......
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Thanks Sid, that's pretty much what we have found. I think that our 30 year old house must be the only one in the area with carpets. We are preparing to market it and were looking to replace like with like, rather than go to the expense of tilingGiven the present cold snap and the obvious discomfort that it brings to our French neighbours, I wonder if there might be an opportunity for some entrepreneur to warm up these old places with some lovely sculptured shagpile!!
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Does anyone know of a carpet fitter in the Deux Sevres? We are close to St Maixent L'Ecole.......many thanks
registration of motors for non-residents
in Driving in France
Posted
How did the prefecture know your principle residence is not in France? If you present a utility bill addressed to your French property, together with all other documentation that should be that..........when I registered our car the question of residency never even came up.
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All our utility bills are sent to our UK address. It is important that we remain UK resident, particularly after the implimentation of the double taxation treaty in December. Even if the French utility bills were sent to our French house, we still wouldn't be able to enter that address in the box "Residence Principale". To do so would potentially open up a whole can of worms.
As I have said above, the purpose of this post was to establish wheteher it was possible for a UK resident to re-register a UK car in France, so that it could be left indefinitely at the residence secondaire.