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Post by Baz Faz on Apr 7, 2024 10:38:34 GMT 2
Baz- when you were in France did you have a local lawyer? In a word, no.
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Post by Voy on Apr 7, 2024 14:14:39 GMT 2
Well rats - he/she could have helped !
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Post by auntieannie on Apr 7, 2024 16:24:37 GMT 2
would your french bank be able to act as financial advisor for you ?
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Post by Baz Faz on Apr 7, 2024 18:24:51 GMT 2
would your french bank be able to act as financial advisor for you ? In the past the bank has refused to act on anything that they have not issued.
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Post by auntieannie on Apr 7, 2024 21:24:04 GMT 2
what crap! maybe ask them again... but I guess you'll have to hire some financial advisor who will accept to work for you to recoup your money.
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Post by Voy on Apr 8, 2024 1:21:32 GMT 2
What about the mayor of your village? could you get him to storm the local branch?
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Post by auntieannie on Apr 8, 2024 8:30:42 GMT 2
Could your uk financial advisor be of help?
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Post by Baz Faz on Apr 8, 2024 11:28:20 GMT 2
Could your uk financial advisor be of help? We don't have one. However friends in France have recommended one.
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Post by auntieannie on Apr 8, 2024 17:59:08 GMT 2
feeling overwhelmed again.
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Post by tzarine on Apr 8, 2024 18:10:26 GMT 2
hugs, annie
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Post by kuskiwi on Apr 9, 2024 6:28:56 GMT 2
Hugs Annie and bother for Baz. French bureaucracy seems to get worse than our stupidly. Hope it can get sorted quickly.
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Post by lumi on Apr 9, 2024 7:21:23 GMT 2
I hope the moment of overwhelm has now passed, Annie. I know how it can feel and wish you plenty to calm and content feelings to follow. What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Do you have some go-to strategies that work for you?
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Post by tzarine on Apr 9, 2024 7:27:34 GMT 2
baz have briefly encountered french bureaucracy a few times. do not envy you
annie lumi is right again. find actions & situations that alleviate the overwhelming situation.
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Post by slowcoach on Apr 9, 2024 14:58:26 GMT 2
I am told that I am underwhelming. Perhaps we should get together.
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Post by Baz Faz on Apr 9, 2024 18:16:43 GMT 2
baz have briefly encountered french bureaucracy a few times. do not envy you Having lived in France I have much experience of French bureaucracy (we even use the French word). When I first lived in France I went with my then wife to register at the Préfecture. My wife went first and answered a lot of queries (grandmother's name). She gave her occupation as retired. My turn. I answered the questions. Also retired, this penpusher asked? No, I replied, I am a writer. She looked at me sharply then went and fetched a colleague. Monsieur is a writer. They both gazed at me. In France, I realised, a writer has sex appeal. In France I was also a volunteer prison visitor. Normally I went to Neuvic. Then I was asked to visit a Briton at the remand prison in Périgueur. Before I could do that I was interrogated at the gendarmerie. The gendarme did not like me coming to see low types. In fact he did no like any English people and despised Britain. Tell me, he commanded, even one cultured Englishman. I was taken aback by this turn of the interrogation. Er, Shakespeare, I said. He shook his head. Shakespeare is not English. Shakespeare is international.
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Post by tzarine on Apr 9, 2024 18:33:57 GMT 2
baz to mess w french bureaucracy @ immigration tzar once listed his profession as boulevardier i listed mine as stevedore
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Post by tzarine on Apr 9, 2024 18:56:38 GMT 2
baz to mess w french bureaucracy @ immigration tzar once listed his profession as boulevardier i listed mine as stevedore tzar was hoping to be asked to sing. he used to sing songs from gigi i was hoping to demonstrate the firemans carry
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Post by tzarine on Apr 13, 2024 23:01:37 GMT 2
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Post by Scrubb on Apr 17, 2024 20:49:18 GMT 2
A rant:
I started a "registered educations savings plan" (RESP) for my step-nephew several years ago. He's in an apprenticeship program, and so I asked the bank what I needed to provide for him to claim the money. it's turned out to be more complicated than I expected (because generically, courses of study have to be 13 consecutive weeks to qualify and the apprenticeship programs only spend 6 to 8 weeks in the classroom each year, for 4 years) and I've been completely unable to find anyone who can clarify. does the on-the-job training part of the apprenticeship also qualify as study? If not, can a portion of the total be released for the shorter-than-13-weeks courses?
The apprenticeship program and the polytechnic where the courses are held both told me it's up to the bank.
The bank employee who I'm supposed to be dealing with has been utterly useless. She didn't bother responding to my emailed questions until I CCed another bank employee, and that was only to send me a link to a generic webpage that didn't answer my questions. It also said "talk to a representative of our bank for more detailed or specific information". So I emailed her back pointing out the website said to speak with the bank about specifics. I asked that if she isn't the right person to help me, could she point me towards whoever is? That was 3 weeks ago and she hasn't bothered to answer me.
I'm getting very frustrated. It shouldn't be so hard to access money put away for my nephew's education, to give him for his education.
My current plan is to go to a different branch of my bank, with my nephew's proof of enrollment for the past 3 years, and ask to deal with someone there instead of the woman who's been ignoring my emails.
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Post by rikita on Apr 17, 2024 23:27:05 GMT 2
booked the wrong dates for a hostel (for april instead of july). noticed today, a few days later, as i wanted to pay (and almost didn't notice. did a new booking for the right dates and wrote them a message that i want to cancel the old one - not sure if that is possible though (can't see their terms on when a cancellation is possible, as the terms lead to a 404 page) ... so, will see what they say. as i said, i haven't paid yet, but as i still want to stay there at the correct dates, just refusing to pay for the wrong booking might make that difficult, too, maybe - so i hope they just accept the cancellation, but it is making me feel a bit stressed just now ...
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Post by Scrubb on Apr 17, 2024 23:35:46 GMT 2
I hope it works out, Rikita.
I've mostly stopped using booking sites (like expedia or booking.com or hotels.com) because of bad experiences with them. If you're dealing directly with the hostel, they should be good about understanding.
(Last summer we had to book somewhere to stay that night, last minute, and I accidentally booked for the wrong night - due to a bizarre glitch in expedia's website, though, where it arbitrarily put in a date. When I tried to call their customer service, it re-directed me to the place I tried to book, and the owner told me that she didn't accept cancellations because expedia had been so hard to deal with in the past.
In the end, when she found out we needed a place that night, she let me switch the booking unofficially, so it worked out ok - but going through expedia was apparently impossible and even if I had managed to get through to them, they wouldn't have helped.)
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Post by OnlyMark on Apr 18, 2024 7:11:40 GMT 2
I use Booking.com quite often and then look at the website of the hotel to compare prices etc. Unless the hotel direct is particularly cheaper I will book via Booking. The reasons being cancellation policies are quite clear as well as other things and the problems I've had have always been with direct bookings in that the hotel fails miserably to communicate and/or it needs a phone call to them when they don't answer and so on. The exceptions are Accor Hotels and B&B Hotels that I book when on journeys and book direct always. We are also aware of with Booking the scam communications regarding payments/cancellations and have had a couple but just ignore them.
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Post by rikita on Apr 18, 2024 7:11:53 GMT 2
Thanks. it was directly though the hostel's website, but according to reviews, the owner can be a bit difficult (i stayed there before but never saw him)...
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Post by shrjeff on Apr 18, 2024 9:52:17 GMT 2
I find booking dot com to have the most reliable reviews as well as the clearest cancellation policy...
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Post by OnlyMark on Apr 18, 2024 10:45:39 GMT 2
The theory with Booking is also that you can't post a review unless you've stayed there. I know they have found a way around that to a certain extent though as, for example, I was looking at hotels in Delhi and disconcerted as to how many 10 reviews there were on a lot of them.
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Post by Scrubb on Apr 18, 2024 22:18:19 GMT 2
I was happy with booking for quite a while, but they were absolutely TERRIBLE in the Philippines last November and I won't deal with them anymore.
We booked something through them that was supposedly a really swanky resort at a fantastic price. Got a confirmation of our reservation. Then "the resort" send us messages insisting that we send a bank transfer as a security deposit, before they would confirm the reservation, so we got suspicious.
Long story short, it was a complete scam. We figured it out before we tried to go check in. Someone cloned the real resort's page from booking.com, and got booking.com to accept it as a new property. And Booking.com would not admit it was a scam and insisted that we had to go check in.
But we had already phoned the real resort and they told us they did not have a reservation for us. The scammer kept sending us messages about the security deposit. (The real resort told me that the security deposit was paid at check in.)
We'd already paid for our last night in a different hotel; we'd planned to just sacrifice that paid night when we decided to move to the swanky resort, so we didn't see the point of wasting taxi fare and time going to check in at a place we knew there was no room waiting. And Booking.com refused to accept that it was a scam, even after I pointed out all the discrepancies. Also, the scam site suddenly changed their name so it was no longer identical to the swanky resort.
In the long run they did reimburse us, but the customer service was SO bad, plus, it showed me how easily they accept scam sites, so I don't trust them at all.
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Post by Scrubb on Apr 18, 2024 22:30:20 GMT 2
Also, when I made a post about this on political stew, 3 or 4 other posters had stories about being scammed through booking.com, too. Booking.com did not reimburse some of them. There are links to media stories about scams, too. scams in AustraliaBooking.com is not doing the scamming, but they don't do a good job of preventing scammers from operating on their site. And no one has reported a good experience with their customer service. Actually, I remembered that a couple years ago another place I booked through Booking.com was not at all the way it came across on Booking's website. For example, they said it was 2 km from a beautiful beach, and had a pool. It also said that there were signposts on the road to get there. In reality, it was a very poor quality forest service road with massive potholes, and absolutely no signage. Also, there was dense forest between the cabins and the beach and the only way to get there was a 25 km drive around. And the pool was, well, a dugout, full of dark green/black water that I don't think anyone would have been willing to swim in. The booking.com page also didn't mention that it was a pot farm. But, I blamed myself for that one, because the actual website of the place was very open about being a pot farm. I hadn't looked at their website, just booked directly through booking.com, because it was last minute and there was no where else available for under $350/night.
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Post by Scrubb on Apr 18, 2024 22:39:58 GMT 2
Quite a few hotels and guesthouses have told me that they hate dealing with expedia, or booking.com (or another one I used once, but I can't remember which one it was. Agoda, maybe?).
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Post by Scrubb on Apr 18, 2024 22:45:38 GMT 2
We lived for 20 years in France. During that time we used a French financial advisor to invest our money to be useful in old age. We have decided old age has come so we wish to close these insurance-linked contracts and move the money to the UK.But all these insurance companies insist we have to go through our financial advisor to do this. Problem: he has died. He was a one-man band so his office (him) has simply stopped. Nobody even informed us he was dead. It took great detective work by Mra Faz. And what has happened to all the files in his office? Not just ours, his other clients? Your story has me thinking. My Dad made some investments with a financial advisor who was someone he knew quite well, and trusted. When he died, they all passed to my Mom. And since then, when she sold the house, she added a bunch more money to the investments. The thing is, it's not at all clear from the statements that arrive just how much she has, what the investments are, whether one is life insurance or not, etc. And this advisor is well into his 80s. I think we need to go see him to get it clarified just exactly how much money is currently invested with him and what the rules are for cashing them in, etc. And who will take over for him when he retires (or dies).
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Post by rikita on Apr 18, 2024 22:59:34 GMT 2
well i got a confirmation and invoice for the booking for july, no reaction to my mail about canceling hte one in april. so i guess i'll just pay for july and ignore the invoice for april and see what happens ... theoretically, if you don't pay a room within ten days, they cancel it anyway (and you pay with a booking number, so hopefully they wouldn't connect the payment to the wrong booking) ... a room like the one i booked is available in april on their website, now - not sure if they have two of them, or if that means they did cancel my booking, just didn't tell me ...
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