Free cavity wall and/or loft insulation
This only applies if you are in the UK, I heard it on Daybreak this morning!!
There is a limited offer from EDF and Tesco ( and I don’t believe you have to be their customer to have this….) British Gas insist on you being a customer…..and they are offering FREE cavity wall or/and loft insulation for a limited time. These companies have targets to reduce their carbon emissions before December so if they hit these targets before then then the free offer of insulation will end.
It is worth around £350 for both and if you are on certain benefits they will actually pay you to have it done, around £100!
Best to get this done in the summer as if your boiler is located up in the loft then it would probably need to be turned off.
So it is a win, win situation….free insulation and cheaper fuel bills.
If you know someone on the UK make sure they know about the offer, they just need to contact Tesco, EDF or their fuel supplier and they will get all the info that they need.
Lazy Sunday
One of the main differences between living in Spain and living in the UK, are the lack of regulations in terms of people living and getting on with their lives here in Spain. We can double park, park across a zebra crossing, on a roundabout, there are very few speed cameras and during fiestas if you want to stand near a decorated float and get run over that will be your issue not the council or person driving. If you fall over a pavement that is your issue not the council and if you slip in a shop, that again is your fault and not the shop keepers. Mostly it is really refreshing, you feel you can breathe and mostly life carries on without anything coming to a complete halt.
In Spain though shops do shut on a Sunday. You can’t go shopping for clothes and you can’t get your food shopping done.
It means that you are cursing on Saturday as you run around trying to buy kids school shoes, that pink polka dot top they need for their 3 minutes on stage for their assembly and the canvas that they need for their art lesson.
It also means that when you wake up on Sunday to blue skies, you know it is going to be a truly lazy Sunday. Day at the beach, day at the pool, picnic, walk? Meet up with friends or family. It means you have to stop rushing about and although I would personally prefer the choice of all of the above OR going to the shops, this is one rule that each and every Sunday I do think…..”maybe this is a good thing, a Sunday for us, a Sunday for your family……a Sunday just for you…”
Child benefit in Spain
If you move to Spain from the UK you are not entitled to collect any child benefit money. There is a lot of confusion about this and a lot of people get away with claiming for it by not telling the UK authorities that they have moved to Spain.
However I have heard of an English Lady that claimed for years and then told the authorities her new Spanish address. She revealed when she had moved and hey presto, she now has a fine of £16,000 to pay to them.
Selling your car or motorbike in Spain
We have just found out to our cost that when you are selling a car or motorbike in Spain you MUST have proof of an up to date ITV.
The gestor will not process the deal if you do not have an ITV.
Annoying as the bike has only done 300km, isn’t insured as it has been garaged since new and not ridden and the buyer didn’t mind about the ITV.
If he didn’t mind why do the authorities want to get involved.
I hate red tape.
Delicious Birthday Cakes
I did try once ordering a birthday cake from a company that seemed to do well on Google and was based locally in Marbella. It was awful! I swear they didn’t use eggs to make it, the texture was not sponge and it ended up in the bin and had cost me around 30 euros too. It looked pretty but tasted nasty.
So usually I’ve just made my own, they aren’t pretty but taste better!
This year my teenage son, sweet 16 today, wanted a carrot cake so I ordered one from Terra Sana. The one that closed down on the Golden Mile was so accomodating, they used to personalise it too. The Terra Sana in La Canada were less accomodating and told me just to turn up in the morning after their delivery.
The cake cost 30 euros, will feed a small army and is DELICIOUS and PRETTY.
Short term car insurance in Spain
Basically there isn’t short term insurance in Spain and I’m starting to get cross!
We have to take out 12 months insurance on a motorbike, costing 200 euros and that’s the only choice we have. We need it for 1 day……
You can get short term insurance in the UK, so why can’t you get it in Spain?!
Closing a bank account
I’ve just tried to close our Barclays bank account down in Marbella.
I had to fill out a form and was told to come back the next day.
So I went back the next day and they stamped another form, sent a fax and I was told to come back the next day….
Well Monday will now be “the next day…” be interesting to see what I’m told then.
I was going to close this account down ages ago and didn’t as I had quite a few direct debits set up and thought speaking in Spanish to each company would be a painful experience.
Well it wasn’t. I just printed off the direct debits I had from the pc, took them to the bank we want to keep, and they organised every single change of direct debit for me. Easy peasy. All this time I’ve been paying monthly charges for two bank accounts and I really didn’t need to.
Selling your car in Spain
Finally sold our cars.
We started off by advertising on the top Spanish free websites for cars. We had virtually no response at all. It was the same with selling furniture via these free ad Spanish sites. Nada.
I then tried Friday Ads online for my car. I noticed that on Friday Ads when you go onto it you hit a nasty virus, so be careful. My car went on and I had a few replies fairly quickly asking for the price. The same happened with furniture I was selling. For some reason when I created the advert WITH the price, when it went live the price disappeared. A strange postcode automatically appeared and quite often I couldn’t find my advert at all. I gave up and tried the SUR in English.
WOW, amazing response. The calls kept coming in which was a shame as the day before the advert appeared I sold my car to a friend!
My husband then decided to try to sell his car. He put it on Friday Ads and put the price inside the advert itself.
The first call came almost immediately and within an hour of putting on the advert a man had come around and made a good offer without even test driving OR starting the car. He’s paid a 200 euro deposit and wants the car asap. We are going to use a gestor to avoid having to go all the way to the Traffico in Malaga and to make sure that all ownership is passed to the new owner. That way any new speeding fines that they run up will not be your responsibility.
So my advice if you are looking to sell your car is to use the Friday Ads but just check your advert is displaying the price. The SUR in English gave me a very good response and I would certainly recommend using that for advertising your car.
Friday Ads has also been very good at selling furniture but now the free newspaper has gone it was slower online than previously…
Removal companies Spain to the UK
I’ve had a learning curve recently on removal companies from Spain to the UK.
I had two quotes, one 900 euros cheaper than the other.
On face value it was a no brainer, go for the cheaper one, but we’ve decided to go for the more expensive one and here is why.
The cheaper removal company uses regular boxes. On a long journey when everything is piled up high, the cheaper boxes are more likely to get crushed. If you have glass light fittings, china or anything fragile and these boxes are at the bottom, damage is likely. The more expensive one source their boxes specifically for their durability and they are extra strength cardboard.
The cheaper quote uses an Arctic lorry which is not a removal lorry, it is not decked out with the equipment for removal of furniture. In other words, the furniture just goes in, can move about and is more likely to get damaged. I don’t want my lovely piano or huge mirrors moving about.
The more expensive company export wraps key pieces of furniture, the other company just throws a blanket on them and hopes for the best.
The more expensive company brings masses of cardboard with them and each mirror and picture is wrapped completely in cardboard and is totally protected. The cheaper company just throws a blanket over them……
The more expensive company quoted us with a higher volume, perhaps they overestimated. However when we moved to Spain a different company underestimated and on the day of our removal we had a quarter of our stuff still in the house and they refused to help saying we must have hidden a room from their view. What?! We had to ring around and organise things ourselves as the new owners of our house were due to move in….it was an absolute nightmare and one I never want to experience again.
The cheaper company may get everything there in one piece but I don’t want the stress or the long claim form to complete if it doesn’t. On the surface the standard of service looked the same, but a few long phone calls quickly established that they are anything but.
So who am I going with?
I’m going with Roy Trevor……
UPDATE.
3 months later we are still awaiting insurance compensation from Roy Trevor, or at the very least a visit from an insurance company for a few items which were damaged in transit. Most arrived absolutely perfect but at least one of the items ( wooden tv cabinet) was expensive and has been badly damaged. We have telephoned and emailed but nothing has been done apart from the suggestion that we get someone AND pay for someone upfront, to fix the wiring and solder some metal on a house lamp that was damaged and that they would pay. So I cannot recommend Roy Trevor.
New Cafe near Iceland
If you are heading to Iceland in Mijas try the new coffee shop that has opened up nearby.
Absolutely lovely….I can’t recall its name but it was really busy today with people eating outside on the terrace and inside it has beautiful glass domes hiding delicious cakes and they have a range of sandwiches all made freshly for you.
Good prices too…..