Help with the French System and Translation

Hope this is the right way to do this - new to the forum, thought it would be good share my experience as I have been finding some great advice and help here.


Just signed up with pleasehelp.fr as we had rather a lot of paperwork to sort out and a situation not quite the usual, so difficult to find somebody who "done it before" to get advice. My French is still very basic and virtually useless on the phone.



Experience so far:
John Dislins, who was dealing with me, seems a very nice chap, well organised, efficient very helpful and patient. He explained thoroughly the procedures, in getting things underway and then just got on with things.
Will give updates as and when on how things go but so far am very impressed and feel its money well spent, probably already potentially saved much more than the fees will cost, had i blundered on myself!
Have carte vital to sort, drivers licence (non EU for Rosie) woodfire tax deduction form and all the usual stuff that newcomers face.



(BTW I have no association with pleasehelp.fr - I came across their services on survivefrance)

Not sure if it’s just me, but I find frequently sites don’t behave as expected when I trying to click a link etc when using the translated version and it becomes a very long winded, frustrating exercise!

As Mandy said, we had been getting a lot of conflicting advice and found myself getting quite frustrated with the processes- obviously wanted to get a lot of these things sorted in a fairly timely manner too! (having lived in an area in Vietnam where nobody spoke English and the language, customs and officialdom was even trickier than in France, perhaps I’ve just had an overload :slight_smile: )

Yes that’s right, we’ve decided to live here - semi retired -one of our houses here is a water mill which I’m partially restoring (just because I like them) so hopefully be able to pick a few brains on the renovation thread too.
We were unsure whether we would need to get in the UK system first and the merits etc

I think Huw probably did the right thing in getting advice about his own very particular circumstances. This site is excellent and members are very helpful but the advice given is sometimes conflicting & can cause even more confusion. I know everyone gives advice with the very best intentions but I would always suggest that people go to the experts. Mistakes can become expensive and time-consuming nightmares!

Thanks Debra - my partner and I are both dual Australian British citizens though she had never lived permanently in UK and I not for 30+ years. We have also been living in Vietnam for the last couple of years so which has given us a few more complications to the mix (eg.car insurance/ licences) . Have found some really helpful advice here so far but some of my stuff is a bit above and beyond and perhaps?
Setting up to live permanently in France has it’s challenges when my French is so rubbish at the moment.
Being able to pass off a lot of the paperwork(not my most favourite past time) might just leave me with a bit more time to improve my French and enjoy life here! :slight_smile: