Taken at the Gormet Bagel Restaurant at the end of avenue de la Gare
28 February, 2006
February's Beautiful Picture of Luxembourg
What better way to celebrate Mardi Gras and the last day of my contract -- especially on a cold, snowy day -- than with a mug of hot white chocolate milk?
Taken at the Gormet Bagel Restaurant at the end of avenue de la Gare
Taken at the Gormet Bagel Restaurant at the end of avenue de la Gare
20 February, 2006
A Moving Company for the Return Trip
We have learned a lot this past year, about ourselves and about various things going on around us. At least Darin and I have. The kids will see, someday, that they have learned something, too. I don't have time this morning to go through everything we have learned, but we have learned a lot about moving.
The worst thing you can do to find a mover is to go to a web site that says if you enter your information, then they will have movers send bids to you. Most of the offers you will get will be from moving companies that are not entirely legitimate.
The best place to start is with your local phone book, or the phone book of the place where you are going, and often the yellow pages can be seen on the web now.
Also, there are several "accreditation"-type groups for movers, so it is also possible to find lists of moving companies from their web sites, such as www.fidi.com. There is also RIM (Registered International Mover, info at http://www.promover.org/education/rim.htm) Certification, OMNI (Overseas Movers Network International) Membership, and ISO 9002 Certification.
We filled out one of the on-line forms, but I didn't want to rely on that with the problems we had with moving companies before. I also wrote directly to several movers from the accreditation sites and from the local phone book.
For the companies that responded to the on-line form, we found problems when I looked them up on-line. One of the companies, Unitrans International Inc., had its license pulled by the US Government, and other companies owned by the same people were under investigation for money laundering. When we wrote back to the company to ask for an explanation, we were told, after about a week of not hearing from them, that it was another company using their name, and they were completely in the clear. I told Darin that even if her story was true, it didn't bode well that it took her a week to answer our email question.
We also had some interest from a company called Wheaton. Though they don't seem to be under investigation, they also are not very responsive when we ask questions.
Though you shouldn't hire a company only based on the web, the web is a very powerful tool for checking on a moving company. Do a Google Search. Check out sites like MovingScam.com. There are a lot of really bad companies out there. After reading some of the stories on these sites, I feel very grateful that we only lost money on the move over here, and not everything we own. Another place to check on international movers is with the Federal Maritime Commission. Their FAQ on movers: http://www.fmc.gov/home/faq/index.asp?F_CATEGORY_ID=18.
The company we are going to hire to get us back to the States is Security Storage Company at www.wemove4u.com. They are fully licensed, gave us a great rate, and have been very responsive to emails. They also come very highly recommended on several web sites.
And they take credit cards. Though not a sure-fire test, I suppose, it is something we have noticed. A lot of the moving companies out there don't take credit cards. We think this is directly related to how they do business. For example, if we had put down a deposit with Sea & Air Cargo on our credit card, and then they didn't show up when promised, we could have simply called the credit card and cancelled. Our new moving company doesn't need a deposit -- we pay when they show up. And we can put it all on the credit card if we want.
We hope to get the container delivery scheduled very soon, and airline tickets bought. Hopefully, we'll hear from our real estate agent today also. I feel sometimes that I won't be able to keep my head above water because everything is changing so quickly. When 2006 began, I thought we would be in the country for another 2 years, and now we could be flying back to the States in less than a month. At least we never finished unpacking. Maybe deep down inside we had seen all this coming all along.
The worst thing you can do to find a mover is to go to a web site that says if you enter your information, then they will have movers send bids to you. Most of the offers you will get will be from moving companies that are not entirely legitimate.
The best place to start is with your local phone book, or the phone book of the place where you are going, and often the yellow pages can be seen on the web now.
Also, there are several "accreditation"-type groups for movers, so it is also possible to find lists of moving companies from their web sites, such as www.fidi.com. There is also RIM (Registered International Mover, info at http://www.promover.org/education/rim.htm) Certification, OMNI (Overseas Movers Network International) Membership, and ISO 9002 Certification.
We filled out one of the on-line forms, but I didn't want to rely on that with the problems we had with moving companies before. I also wrote directly to several movers from the accreditation sites and from the local phone book.
For the companies that responded to the on-line form, we found problems when I looked them up on-line. One of the companies, Unitrans International Inc., had its license pulled by the US Government, and other companies owned by the same people were under investigation for money laundering. When we wrote back to the company to ask for an explanation, we were told, after about a week of not hearing from them, that it was another company using their name, and they were completely in the clear. I told Darin that even if her story was true, it didn't bode well that it took her a week to answer our email question.
We also had some interest from a company called Wheaton. Though they don't seem to be under investigation, they also are not very responsive when we ask questions.
Though you shouldn't hire a company only based on the web, the web is a very powerful tool for checking on a moving company. Do a Google Search. Check out sites like MovingScam.com. There are a lot of really bad companies out there. After reading some of the stories on these sites, I feel very grateful that we only lost money on the move over here, and not everything we own. Another place to check on international movers is with the Federal Maritime Commission. Their FAQ on movers: http://www.fmc.gov/home/faq/index.asp?F_CATEGORY_ID=18.
The company we are going to hire to get us back to the States is Security Storage Company at www.wemove4u.com. They are fully licensed, gave us a great rate, and have been very responsive to emails. They also come very highly recommended on several web sites.
And they take credit cards. Though not a sure-fire test, I suppose, it is something we have noticed. A lot of the moving companies out there don't take credit cards. We think this is directly related to how they do business. For example, if we had put down a deposit with Sea & Air Cargo on our credit card, and then they didn't show up when promised, we could have simply called the credit card and cancelled. Our new moving company doesn't need a deposit -- we pay when they show up. And we can put it all on the credit card if we want.
We hope to get the container delivery scheduled very soon, and airline tickets bought. Hopefully, we'll hear from our real estate agent today also. I feel sometimes that I won't be able to keep my head above water because everything is changing so quickly. When 2006 began, I thought we would be in the country for another 2 years, and now we could be flying back to the States in less than a month. At least we never finished unpacking. Maybe deep down inside we had seen all this coming all along.
11 February, 2006
Our Biggest Catch-22 Yet
We finally hit a Catch-22 we're not willing to fight against.
Let me start off by mentioning that we still don't have our residency permits. My salary was 12,000 euros short of what was promised after taxes, and I can't get a straight answer from my boss or his accountant about whether the money is coming back to us from Luxembourg as an overpayment of taxes or not.
Without the 12,000 euros, the prospect of getting a car anytime soon is dim. You would think that we could get a loan for a car, but even that hope seems dim. I applied for a VISA card, and the bank said they would give me one with a limit of 1,250 euro, but only if I kept 3,750 euro in a special "saving account" that would not draw interest and we could not take the money from. When I seemed shocked that they would require this from us, they explained that we had never had a credit card before. Never mind that we have excellent credit in the United States. In Luxembourg, it's like being a teenager and starting from scratch.
Then came the Catch-22.
We have been telling people that our kids are doing correspondence courses from the States. It turns out that will work only if you can prove that you are in the country on a temporary basis. My work permit says that we are here indefinitely. If my boss had applied for a work permit for only a few years, then they would have denied the application because obviously, if it's only temporary, then he doesn't really need someone from America. I mentioned to my boss that we were in trouble with the Luxembourg administration for not having the kids in school. He said that we were terrible parents for not making the kids go to school because as parents we all have to make kids do things they don't want to do. The problem is that it's not only the kids who don't want to be in the public schools -- the public schools don't want my kids. It's against the law for us to have them here at home, but Luxembourg doesn't want them in the public schools, and we can't afford private schools in Luxembourg.
Everyone seems to have the attitude that if we just put them in the public schools and let them struggle and fail for a while, after 3 or 4 years they will be fine. By that time, we would really like to be back in the States. But that assumes that Luxembourg will actually try to teach my children.
So we're going home.
My provisional contract ends at the end of February, and I gave my boss the 1 month notice required by the contract three weeks ago. We're looking for a mover and a real estate agent back in the States.
I think we really have learned "How Not to Move to Luxembourg."
Let me start off by mentioning that we still don't have our residency permits. My salary was 12,000 euros short of what was promised after taxes, and I can't get a straight answer from my boss or his accountant about whether the money is coming back to us from Luxembourg as an overpayment of taxes or not.
Without the 12,000 euros, the prospect of getting a car anytime soon is dim. You would think that we could get a loan for a car, but even that hope seems dim. I applied for a VISA card, and the bank said they would give me one with a limit of 1,250 euro, but only if I kept 3,750 euro in a special "saving account" that would not draw interest and we could not take the money from. When I seemed shocked that they would require this from us, they explained that we had never had a credit card before. Never mind that we have excellent credit in the United States. In Luxembourg, it's like being a teenager and starting from scratch.
Then came the Catch-22.
We have been telling people that our kids are doing correspondence courses from the States. It turns out that will work only if you can prove that you are in the country on a temporary basis. My work permit says that we are here indefinitely. If my boss had applied for a work permit for only a few years, then they would have denied the application because obviously, if it's only temporary, then he doesn't really need someone from America. I mentioned to my boss that we were in trouble with the Luxembourg administration for not having the kids in school. He said that we were terrible parents for not making the kids go to school because as parents we all have to make kids do things they don't want to do. The problem is that it's not only the kids who don't want to be in the public schools -- the public schools don't want my kids. It's against the law for us to have them here at home, but Luxembourg doesn't want them in the public schools, and we can't afford private schools in Luxembourg.
Everyone seems to have the attitude that if we just put them in the public schools and let them struggle and fail for a while, after 3 or 4 years they will be fine. By that time, we would really like to be back in the States. But that assumes that Luxembourg will actually try to teach my children.
So we're going home.
My provisional contract ends at the end of February, and I gave my boss the 1 month notice required by the contract three weeks ago. We're looking for a mover and a real estate agent back in the States.
I think we really have learned "How Not to Move to Luxembourg."
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