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opening a new account


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After visiting the Harrogate French exhibition we have now read the information we received on opening a new bank account. Britline seems a good option for someone with basic French, or would the Forum suggest that a local bank in your nearest town a better option.
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Britline are just an offshoot of CA and having an account with them can cause problems further down the line.

It's been well discussed before but in brief CA branches are almost like franchises which means you can run into problems if you need to do business in another branch.

I've heard it said that if you pay a cheque in to another branch the just post it to your own !

Virtually everyone will advise you to open an account in your own or a nearby village, preferrably one in which at least some of the staff speak English. Your IMMO, if you are using one, can often advise you on the best bank for non French speakers.

The other thing about Britline is their onerous procedure involving certified copies of passports and other documents whereas in France it's quite possible to walk into a bank and emerge with your account 30 minutes later, that's all it took us.

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We still have a Britline account after 5 years here AND we have another account at our local CA.  Both still work perfectly for us.  We used Britline solely before our move and when we first moved here but made sure we opened the local account within the first 3 months of being here.
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Britline do have the advantage of speaking English (although the online account is operated in French) but as ANO points out they do want an inordinate amount of paperwork.  However, once opened, they've been very easy to deal with and when I was incapacitated my o/h could do all the banking without having to worry about the standard of his French.  But then Normandy is 5ks away from us so we can use a local branch.  Their insurance arm have been mega also and dealt with a complicated building claim really well even though it was actually a problem with our builders (they paid out then argued with the builders' insurers afterwards.)

On the other hand, friends of ours who moved near to us opened an account at the local Caisse d'Eparnge and they have been great also - plus they offered a free debit card for the first year and have paid interest on their current account.  Or you could do both, as Tony has.  If you don't have cards then it's free to operate a current account at many banks.

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We tried opening an account through Britline from the UK but fell at the first hurdle when both our UK banks refused to certify the inordinate amount of paperwork required.

Walked into a branch of Credit Agricole with passport and copy of UK gas bill and walked out 30mins later with an account.
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Thanks for the info, i have also been talking to the people we are buying our house from, they also need a lot of paper work at the start with Britline but used them for the first two months and then used a local bank once they had gained some local information from their neighbours
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[quote user="Sunflower"]We tried opening an account through Britline from the UK but fell at the first hurdle when both our UK banks refused to certify the inordinate amount of paperwork required. [/quote]

Yes, quite.  Same problem.

So I said to them (something along these lines) "So after 40 yrs of banking with you, you're saying that you don't ****** know me !!!" 

They filled in the form.  BTW, their reply didn't say anything particularly good or bad about me, just that I'd had an a/c with them for 22 yrs.

"Why only 22 yrs", said I?  "Well, our records only go back that far." [:'(]

This is a classic and perfectly reasonable question from somebody moving out here. Answer = both options work perfectly well until, (like any bank in the world), something goes wrong.  Then it's a question of how quickly / well they fix it.  But it's banking - mostly it works.   

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