Moving to Ireland, what a nightmare

[Systreg]

I'm moving to Ireland in a couple of days and I thought getting broadband over there was a nightmare, it's just getting worse now that I find out I have to close my Google Adsense account as well, as you can't change your address to another country, so need to open a new account when I get to Ireland, just friggin great, now I'll have to change every Adsense ad on each site I use it on, not sure I can be bothered with that, so might be easier to do without Adsens and just delete code from sites.

Then just a few minutes ago I went to change my postal address to the Ireland address in my PayPal account, only to find you're not allowed to do that, ffs, you first need to withdraw all funds to your bank and then close your account and open a new on in Ireland arrrrggggghhhhhhhh , and you need a credit card in Ireland to top up or withdraw funds to, not like in the UK where we can use our Visa Electron debit card, so new bloody bank account needed over there with a credit card.

Now I have another problem, if I withdraw the funds in my PayPal to our bank here, the bank details are supposedly being changed to the Irish address but having postcode probles with that, so will the funds still go to the bank or get stuck somewhere in cyber space or frozen at PayPal if they can't transfer it to the bank?

Then there is the subject or getting broadband in Ireland, really doing my head in complete nightmare, We'll be staying at my mums place, so she phones Eircom and they say no, we don't supply broadband to your area, jesus christ. But wait, simple, I'll use mobile broadband dongle, no, can't do that because the edge of my mums land runs along a valley with a huge hill rising above it blocking mobile signals, even got this company www.rapidbroadband.ie out to install their broadband service, they had a dish all over the place and got zero signal from anywhere because their transmitter is miles away on the other side of the bastard hill.

So because of not being able to get broadband, I decide to go and rent a house in a small town not far from my mums, my mum goes to look at a property and gets talking to the woman owner, she asks my mum where she's from, she tells here and says she knows a woman who lives out that way, turns out the woman is my mums next door neighbour, small world eh.

Anyway, my mum gets back home and she hasn't seen her neighbour for a while as my mum is not long back from a cruise, but sees her that same day, they are chatting and the neighbour starts moaning about her son making her computer slow by downloading a load of crap on to it off the net.

So my mum goes, what, you have broadband? Yes says the neighbour, she's had it installed for the last 2 weeks, her company provides it so she can work from home, so my mum thinks it must be some sort of company setup to provide her with the internet connection, but no, the neighbour says it's home broadband from Eircom, yes, the same bloody Eircom my mum phoned a few days earlier and was told they don't supply home broadband in her area, accept her neighbour 20 feet away has just had it installed, idiots.

So my mum gets back on to Eircom and they say a new line needs to be fitted costing €120 but there is no guarantee that it will work, supposed to be putting the line in this Friday just gone and then testing it for broadband capability tomorrow, but Eircom say there is no guarantee it'll work even though next doors has it, they say there might be 10 houses in a row all with a broadband line, but only 1 of the 10 house might be able to actually get online, and they don't actually know why, what a shite system, they are years behind over there. Fingers crossed for good news about the connection tomorrow when they test it, otherwise I need to fork out €600 - €700 a month for a house in town just so I can get a damn internet connection, when the whole idea of staying at my mums for a year was to be their rent free instead of paying rent for our place in the UK and lining a landlords pocket when it's better off in out pocket to save toward buying or building a new house.

Another problem is there there is no post code system in the Republic of Ireland, they were planning to bring a system in for that in 2011 but have made a technical error with the tender so companies can't now put in a price for the contract, so that'll probably now be another couple of years past that before/if it's introduced.

But because there is no post code there, it's causing problems with our bank as they say their system wont accept the address without a postcode, also owed money by the BBC TV licence people, but they can't send what they owe to Ireland because they need to enter a bloody post code on their computer, ffs, nightmare.

Oh yeah, and if a letter was addressed to me or my other half, it would take an age to get there unless it has "care of Mr and Mrs xxxxx" on the envelope, because my mums is way out in the sticks and the postman only knows addresses by the names of people who he knows live there, my mum said she had a package sent for someone and they forgot the care of bit in the address and it took over a month for the Irish post office to find out exactly which address it should go to, so friggin backwards of a place it is, lunatics, wishing I had now decided to stay where the hell I am in England

[GreyWing]

Sounds like a bit of an epic tale, usually I'd try to offer some sort of constructive advice, but you are screwed and so far gone the samaritans is the only thing I can suggest. But not even sure if they accept calls from Ireland on their freephone number.

[Systreg]

Cheers Graeme, I think if I did actually get through the Samaritans, they would just throw their hands up in the air and admit defeat

I thought moving in to my mums place would be a doddle, move in, get the broadband on, change PayPal postal address etc, had no idea would need to close Google and PayPal accounts and other problems, looks so easy on paper, now if I can't get the broadband connection at her place, I'll be paying out more over there than I pay to rent where I am here, so that'll be the whole saving part of the plan out of the window, grrrrrrrrrr

[edit]

And it's not like I can pull out now and stay here, notice handed in on flat, ferry is booked, hotel booked for my mum here when they come to pick us up, and I've given away all our household furniture and other items on Freecycle as we are just talking clothes, laptops and the 3 cats with us. I Suppose the bleeding ferry will sink on the way just to cap it all

[Skinner]

I sent ALOT of packages to southern ireland and its not uncommon to put

Kev
Via X Shop
C/o Mrs X
Town

So it probably goes from me to the post shop, where the milkman or whatever picks it up, and drops it off, kinda thing. I had one with 2 via's and a care of once too.

The kicker is, one clients work has a post code, but 5 miles down the road their home doesn't, so recorded delivery small packet £1.40 to their work, 5 miles up the road £6.07 as it goes to international signed for. Work next day postage, home 5 days, takes the mick that royal mail charge so damned much for a line on a map.

You maybe better speaking to a larger bank bud. I'm with barclays and I have accounts in a few countries setup by them, so they can probably open your account in ireland and change your details internally ? worth a thought.

[crabfoot]

Satellite Broadband from Kingston Comms works anywhere with electric - stupid cost compared to land line, cheaper than renting a house.

Barclays definitely good bank for international mucking about - Skinner right. HSBC not bad also, Lloyds rubbish.

[newpbc]

Wow major hassles mate sounds like the pace of life will be much calmer when the initial troubles are ironed out. Are you staying in Ireland after the years up if not do you have a trusted friend or relative whos address you could park your financials with for a year

[jwm]

Why not set up an account with these guys for your adsense account

https://www.scanmypost.co.uk/

I would imagine you would only need a very light user account (£10 per year) since correspondence from Google will be minimal. Would at least save you the hassle of changing all your websites with a new adsense account.

[JMOT]

And if you thought all that was bad the weather is even more depressing than the UK.... Lol

[Systreg]

More bad news, just phoned my mum to see how they got on testing the new line for broadband, and she says Eircom were out for hours on Friday trying to install the new line but couldn't do it, something about it needs something else and something else which costs a lot and isn't available blah blah blah, planks.

They also said that if the property had previously had broadband installed then they could have done it, so how the hell can the house 20 feet away get a fresh line in and not my mums? Fecking ridiculous. There are only 3 houses where my mum lives, the one next door and one further down the lane, there is a telegraph pole outside my mums and the next door house and the phone wires go from that to each house, so it beggars belief that they can connect one house but not the other, seriously fecking annoyed at the moment

@ Skinner, yes, it's a bit like that in that it needs to have her name as the care of name next to any postal mail.

Originally Posted by crabfoot

Satellite Broadband from Kingston Comms works anywhere with electric - stupid cost compared to land line, cheaper than renting a house.

Yes, I looked at another satellite company site link that was given to me and they want £112 per mont but that's only for 12GB of bandwidth, I need at least 50GB per month, so not worth it at those costs and Kingston probably aren't much different price wise, can't say for sure because I just looked at their www.k-c.co.uk site and can't see anything about a satellite service on there?

Originally Posted by newpbc

Are you staying in Ireland after the years up if not do you have a trusted friend or relative whos address you could park your financials with for a year

Well, the plan was to stay until xmas next year simply to save some extra cash rather than giving a landlord money, then either go and buy in France as was my original plan, or, the other alternative was to build a house in Ireland as my mum has given us 1/2 an acre of land if we wish to build a house.

But, where the house would be built, it's in the samed valley below the big bloody hill, so I would be in the same position of not being able tog et broadband there, so having to have second thoughts about that now, alth
ough financially, building a house is cheap, it's the land that costs a lot, so getting the land for free we could build a place for about €70K which would then be worth €250k - €300k on it's nice sized plot, but they sometimes stipulate a 7 year order on new built properties meaning you can't sell on for 7 years from the build date, not always the case but they can add a clause saying that, then again, could always rent it out and still get a place in France and live off the rental fees, so options still open on that one.

Originally Posted by jwm

Why not set up an account with these guys for your adsense account

https://www.scanmypost.co.uk/

Yes, somethinbg like that might be ok, but on the other hand, I don't earn a great deal from Adsense, only about £120 per year, so no great loss if I was to lose that I suppose.

Originally Posted by JMOT

And if you thought all that was bad the weather is even more depressing than the UK.... Lol

Thanks for reminding me about that Tom, git , it does get a lot of wet weather in Cork according to my mum, it's been very hot there this summer, but also a lot of rain in the winter months, the town near her (Bandon) was flooded by the river last year due to very heavy rainfall, stuff was floating out of shops down the high street and loads of property wrecked.

[admin]

I feel for your story. My father is from Cavan is Southern Ireland and moved back there recently to our family home (a cottage in the middle of no-where). We had the same challenges with broad-band.

When you run a bath it draws water from the lake opposite, so you get used to the brownish water in your freshly-run bath after a while; not!

My grand-dad lives there too being 97 now so the pace of life and fresh air must be doing something good. He only stopped driving a couple years ago but his car is older than he is - never having seen an MOT or anything.

Ireland really is decades behind anywhere else I have been but that gives it it's charm that I love to visit, not sure I could live there.

Good luck and keep us posted.