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Jaw dropping prices but where else to go?


Chancer
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[quote user="tuppence"]

Interesting thread this one with differing items being discussed. I have a 2002 Rover 25 which I bought in the UK last December, registered it in France in March. It was a one owner, low mileage car costing £1795.00. With tax and MOT. Our local garage has a 1999 Rover 200 with 149,000km on clock and he wants 2,900€. Also for me to replace headlights would cost (from Germany on Ebay) over £400[6], almost 20% of the price of the car itself.

tuppence

[/quote]

Yes Tuppence, but 20% of not a lot is not a lot when you think about it ? Plus if you had the steering wheel on the correct side for the roads here ?

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Returning to the original thread .................  magazines.

Of a 'special interest' nature. [:-))]  Yeh, I know, but it's not nurdy or dodgy (well, not to me anyhow), but in the UK you'll pay £3.75-ish, over here the last one I looked at was €15.  Of course, it's circulation, which just goes to show that there are more nurds like me in the UK than there are in France.

You really want to know what the 'specialist nature' is, don't you?  Answers on a postcard.

 

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[quote user="Gardian"]

Returning to the original thread .................  magazines.

Of a 'special interest' nature. [:-))]  Yeh, I know, but it's not nurdy or dodgy (well, not to me anyhow), but in the UK you'll pay £3.75-ish, over here the last one I looked at was €15.  Of course, it's circulation, which just goes to show that there are more nurds like me in the UK than there are in France.

You really want to know what the 'specialist nature' is, don't you?  Answers on a postcard.

[/quote]

€15 - Good grief!

I thought that they were a rip off at the UK price but that [:-))]

I did once see a special edition of countryside and nature magazine that covered my region, and I thought "well one magazine in 5 years wont hurt" at €25 it bloomin well would have, and it was only the thickness of a normal monthly magazine .

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Yes, I can vouch for €15 being the price of a specialist magazine.  We were shopping at Leclerc and OH went to have a look at the magazines section. 

Lo and behold, he found a magazine about Compostelle, the route, the legends, (and Forum friends would know that Gemonimo and I are going on this pilgrimage next year), so he bought it for me.  I had the vapours when I saw the price but then you aren't supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, are you? (so here we are, back on horses, LOL) 

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[quote user="sweet 17"]

Yes, I can vouch for €15 being the price of a specialist magazine.  We were shopping at Leclerc and OH went to have a look at the magazines section. 

Lo and behold, he found a magazine about Compostelle, the route, the legends, (and Forum friends would know that Gemonimo and I are going on this pilgrimage next year), so he bought it for me.  I had the vapours when I saw the price but then you aren't supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, are you? (so here we are, back on horses, LOL) 

[/quote]

Douce, I am sure that you should know by now that you should not walk around supermarkets carrying an open bottle of gin! It gives us ex-pats a very bad name when the gin vapours waft over everyone [6]!

Steak cheval!![Www][blink][kiss]

By the way, we gave up the subscription to France mag when we moved over because we balked at the price along with the cost of a personal courier to deliver it by hand to our bedside at the hour of our bidding! Well for that price it should have been a personal courier!

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Gin makes the world go round, and round, and round, and round, and round...

I gave up my sub to Living France too.  Somehow less relevant once you are here - and far too south-west oriented for those of us in the north-east! 

I do treat myself to "Massif des Vosges" for a "mere" 6,50.  The pictures are great, and I leave them in the gites for visitors when I finished with them.

Fi

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Not cheaper for us 'cause where we live there's no need to buy anything but the lovely local wines from the largest vinyard in the world, Languadoc, where we live!![:P]

Plus, even if we did want Spanish wine going to Tescos would not be our first choice. The airfare puts it in the expensive bracket? Plus I don't and have NEVER liked Tescos full stop!

Someone once said that Tescos was in existence to keep the rif-raf out of Waitrose [6]

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  • 3 weeks later...
[quote user="Chancer"]

I knew it was inevitable that this would degenerate into a much cheaper in England discussion, if anyone knows where to get better deals on these things in France please post.

For me at least I would gain the time and expense of ever more frequent UK shopping trips and the money could be spent in the French economy.

[/quote]

 Where we  live in Surrey in the UK, Mercedes charge over £100 an hour labour charges, In Vendome in France  they charge 52 Euro an hour and the French garage actually do what they say they have done, not always the case in England or should I say rip off land. Needless to say I get my car serviced in France.

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Yes I had forgotten that advantage NickP

My one for today is rechargeable batteries for my cordless phone, one of them had died rendering the phone useless, I was pleased to see that they were standard AAA size rather than being a manufacturer specific battery pack.

They are NI-MH as opposed to NI-Cads but the local electromanegerie shed do stock them ("but we dont have any at the moment, they will be in tomorrow") but at €14 for a pair.

It seemed a bit steep so I tried Amazon.fr, plenty of offerings but the cheapest being pretty much the same price plus delivery.

Then I found a shop on E-bay UK that were selling packs of four at £1.99 including delivery to France from Hong Kong, I paid, they arrived exactly when they estimated in a jiffy bag which I have saved to re-use, they work perfectly and I now have a couple of spares to boot!

And at one twenty eighth of the French price including overseas delivery [:-))]

What do these cost in the UK?

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Last time I was over I had to buy a 14mm combination spanner to fit the new chainsaw chain I had just aquired for 30 euros(£17 in UK). 8 euros for an own make Mr Brico one.

Regarding powertools in a previous reply, I am glad that the french hold B&D in high regard because that keeps me in a job :-) , but the prices are very expensive in France. The Dewalt tools are very good though I have never seen them in the Brico's. Typically a B&D tool has a development time of 9months where the Dewalt one typically 2 to 3 years and that's what you pay for. Also all the B&D tools are made in China, Dewalt manufacture in Europe (sadly not the UK now). Bosch are excellent and always have been.

 

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Thats interesting to know Tibbs.

I am still getting sterling service from my 14.4v Elu combi drill which is/was  exactly the same as the Dewalt one either Dewalt released it initially under the Elu brand or they took over the design from Elu, perhaps you will know.

Anyway I reckon that I have been using it professionally for over 10 years, I remember a tradesman remarking that it must be old to be badged Elu and that was over 7 years ago to my reckoning. I even bought a second one for a pittance on E-bay as the Elu brand is pretty much unknown there which now does me service in the UK, one of the batteries was an original Elu and it is still working well.

My Hitachi SDS drill has served me even longer although it will soon need new brushes, as my cheap chinese power tools fail I repalce them the second time around with Bosch professional ones but not bought in France!

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The batteries on my Elu 9.6v drill have just given up the ghost and I am going to cut one of them open to see if I can fit new ones. More is the pity that ni-cads aren't available any more. The Nmh battloose their charge over about a week or so which is a pain when you pick up the tool you want and the batteries are flat! Even the new ones that are 'supposed' to hold their charge are nowhere as good as ni-cads. A bit more power --- when they are charged!

Just in case you didn't know. Nickle cadmium batteries were withdrawn at the beginning of this year because they contain cadmium, considered dangerous.

One of the best places I have found for all sorts of batteries and all sorts of other stuff is www.7dayshop.com but unfortunately they don't ship to France anymore due to the thugs that ripped them off by not paying one way or another!

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That rings bells C!  I have a super inteligent battery charger that will charge anything from an AAA to a car battery. I will chuck one of them onto that and see if it works. Good idea and good money saver too!

If that don't work then the 'thump' will have to be tried...

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Back when I was trading in England and had accounts with Farnell, CPC, Maplin, RS etc I used to replace the dead cells in battery packs which gave good results, the problem was that my solder tagged joints were not as good as the spot welded originals and could fail through vibration or sometimes melt under stall or short circuit current.

Now I reckon that I didnt even need to replace them at all and could have in fact burned off the sulphation or whatever it is that causes them to fail.

I dont know if it is the same with NI-mh but my experience with Nicads is that they are fine all the time that you use the tool and recharge it on a daily basis, my first batteries showed no sign of flagging until I took my first holiday in 13 years, it was one month and the batteries were foutu after that.

The same thing happened 4 years later with the replacements but that was a break of one year and I knew what to expect.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Yeah well, buy it and pay the postage (ok not bags of sand).  At least we have the option, the poor sods without English (or spanish or german ...) just pay I guess.

But tell you what.  If anybody is making an expedition with a big van, and can drop stuff in Sete (34 near Montpellier), I've got a little list and be only too happy to pay.

Steve

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  • 1 month later...
 [blink] Someone once said that Tescos was in existence to keep the rif-raf out of Waitrose

Alan Coren said that Sainsbury's was invented to keep the riff-raff out of Waitrose.

Seems that Waitrose is responsible for the setting-up of many other supermarkets!
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