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stephens

hi everyone as any body got any ideas about fulltiming in europe i do not have any family or uk address for such things as bank accounts ect ,ie po box or any other means of contact. thanks for any comments Confused

Rawpower

Hi,
I'm interested what comes up here as this may well apply to me too in the near future.

As far as I know banks will not accept PO boxes. Nor will insurance companies. They want you "resident" and crucially on the voter roll. You can pay for a commercial accomodation address that will be less obvious than a PO box. Whether theses addresses wind up blacklisted by credit reference agencies and the like is another matter. Technically at least you could register to vote at one of these kind of addresses.

Interestingly some online banks, notably Smile and Cahoot rarely mail you anything other than new debit cards and cheque books. It's all done on the web. Once setup you could run upto 2 years without having to receive mail from them. IF.com on the other hand mail out monthly bank statements just like the high street banks.

houseboatdream

Hi Stephens

I have just been researching this very question in preparation for our 2007 Grand Tour.

My conclusion is that you need to have all the financial and insurance arrangements in place before you actually relinquish property ownership or occupation - then it is simply a matter of continuing existing arrangements ie renewing policies etc. Once your bank account is set up and running no further electoral register checks will be made. Try to stick to banks that operate internet accounts as suggested previously or opt to go paperless. There are quite a few banks and credit card organisations that do this.

You are still going to get an element of post. If you set up the arrangement whilst still living at a "normal" address then the Royal Mail will re-direct post for a charge for up to two years. post can be re-directed to another address, a PO Box or abroad. You need to set this up before you leave property because you will need to provide documents ie utility bills to prove your identity. By the way, the same goes if you want to rent a storage unit.

The problem I see with a PO Box is that whilst these are quite easy to set up they have to be emptied regularly. The Royal Mail website has a lot of information about how to set up a PO Box, but says that if it is not emptied for three months they will close it down. Bit of a problem if you are down in the south of france.

I did find some companies that offer a mail forwarding service. One in particular was

Rawpower

Thanks Houseboatdream. You've done your homework Wink

Does anyone know about being able to have urgent post forwarded whilst on the road in Europe?
In my instance I've left it woefully late to discover the horrendous debit card charges abroad (see many threads on this board) and applied for a Nationwide account a week ago. Chances are the card won't be issued before I leave for Spain. It will be forwarded from here by Royal Mail to a family member. I was wondering if it is possible to pick up mail from a main town post office in Spain? The more expensive option would be to park on a campsite for a week and have it forwarded there but the cost of a weeks' camping would wipe out the savings by not using my existing debit cards!

artona · Moderator

Hi

you could email some of our spanish members to see if you could have it forwarded to them or ask the nationwide to see it they have any spanish partner banks

stew

baldlygo

billym

If you Google Poste Restante it will answer your questions re post abroad. I have never used it as we stay on sites .

houseboatdream

Rawpower - Billym has already answered your question; you can have post sent to a post office abroad "poste restante"

Address has to be written:

Lista de Correos (for Spain, other countries varies)
Surname, First name
Post code
Town
Country

You will need your passport as ID to collect mail. Never tried it personally.

Baldlygo - yes, i share your concerns about the insurance. I actually work in the insurance industry (for a bit longer anyway!) and I'm afraid to say I know all too well their claims avoidance methods. I'm afraid I don't have any answers here. My thinking is, and it may be not be right so don't rely on it, that if you own a property in the UK which is your "address" and you can prove this with the Land Registry or whatever, then this can be used as your address even if you have the post re-directed and you let other stay in the house temporarily whilst you are abroad. If your motorhome insurers have said to you, as Safeguard did to me, "you have got European cover for 365 days" then i interpret this as you can go to Europe and will be covered for 365 days. I think the Insurance Ombudsman would probably agree. By the way, it is unlikely that Insurers would start looking at the Electoral Register for an RTA claim, they usually only do this if fraud is suspected.

HBD

billym

[quote] The more expensive option would be to park on a campsite for a week and have it forwarded there but the cost of a weeks' camping would wipe out the savings by not using my existing debit cards!

Most sites in Spain give a discount for long stays up to 50% in some cases so it is NOT economical for a weeks stay but worth it for a month to get a 'job' lot of post sent out.
BillyM