Transferring Electric and Water on completion enquiry

Hi,

I am completing in the next week or so.  My lawyer says he will transfer the services into my name for e300.  This sounds like a bit of a con to me. Would this be easy to do?  Or should I just pay up?

(note my Spanish is pretty non existent but i intend  to be there for the completion before returning to the UK the next day).

Many thanks for any help.

Against what it seems... connecting utilities is not a simple deal. Better to rely on a lawyer or a gestor.

Best,

Maria

Ah .. I have just re-read my contract and it says that the utilities will transferred on the sale.   (It is a re-sale property that has been an empty holiday home for a number of years).    The water and electric are currently connected so surely it will be easy to just notify the utility providers of my bank account details for a direct debit to be set up???  or am i very naive!!

€300?????

Despite what Maria says, for something so simple that is an absolute outrage! If you were buying in Torremolinos, I'd gladly do it for you for half that, be all done by lunch time, have myself a very nice lunch thank you very much, and still have time to laugh all the way to the bank.

If you are buying through an estate agent, they will almost certainly do it for you as part of their service. Alternatively, if you can possibly allow yourself a bit more time, a couple of days after completion, say, you can probably figure it out yourself. If you tell us where you are, someone on here may be able to tell you where to go, what to do etc.

€300????

Tch!

(P.S. Maria - 5:20 am??? Can't sleep?!)

Hi Roberto,

Thanks for the kind offer ... i would gladly have treated you to that lunch rather than be ripped off by the lawyer!  ... i thought I was being conned yet again (standard con price e300?  Cost that for NIE ... another story .... live and learn ... Grrrhhh)

I  am buying in Calpe and through an Estate Agent who seems to be really helpful so far!  (mind you he instigated the NIE scam!)

I will be over for a couple of days and hopefully i will be completing on Mon 16th Feb and then I will be around all day on the 17th in Calpe to deal with any issues so any advice from anyone in the Calpe/Altea/Benissa region gladly accepted by this Newbie!

Well, I'm afraid I don't know Calpe at all, but a quick Google found these, which may help save some time. Maybe someone nearer can confirm if these are correct?

Water:

Aguas de Calpe
Avd. Diputación,6

96 583 77 07

IBI (council tax):

SUMA
Avd. Ifach,9. Edf. Les Muralles

96 583 66 04

Electric:

Iberdrola

Camino de la Huerta; Edf. La Cruz (Altea)

901 202020

Hope these help?

We bought in Tenerife a couple of years ago. The estate agent arranged for the NIE appointments,  and arranged all the services to be changed over. Even now she is only too happy to help us out. And all for no cost. There are some very helpful professionals out there. Thank you, you know who you are.

Roberto asked:

P.S. Maria - 5:20 am??? Can't sleep?!)

Maria answers:  Yes I can, and thanks God I sleep very deeply but wake up very early!

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Maria! 3:52 a.m.?????????

Surely at this hour, you are either just coming home from, or going out to, the local nightclub? And to think we all thought of you as a quiet, professional wife & mother!

As María says, it is not that simple to do a change of name in the contract. First, you have to go to the water offices and the electricity offices, the local one, so that will mean whoever is doing the service taking their car (and that is time to go there, time to come back to their office, and the petrol and wear and tear of the car, one trip and back to the water company office, one trip and back to the electricity office). And then, at least where the electricity is concerned, do the follow up within a few days to check that the contract has been changed, and if anybody has ever called the electricity customer service number knows that that can mean a waiting time of ten, fifteen, even twenty five minutes on the phone, until somebody finally takes the call and stops the music.

Plus, the phone calls to and from to notify the contracts are made, to ask what is needed, to do the photocopies...

It might seem expensive but at the end of the day it is a bothersome service that takes quite a bit of time. Also, in those 300 might be included what needs paying to the water company because same only accept cash for the setting up of the new contract ad the caution money, whereas usually the electricity company charges that money and the caution money directly to your bank account. So maybe 100 are to be taken off those 300 for the water company, and your lawyer only keeps 200. And it could also be that those 300 are just a provision of funds, for  the water contract, maybe a pending electricty bill...

Sadly what we can't do ourselves needs to be paid, outrageous or not. My IT problems cost me quite a bit, but I have to pay the man or else I am out of business, and if his rates are 30 euro per hour well... he is well worth it.

What you can't do ot over the phone!!!

Oh noes !!!!

"What we can't do ourselves needs to be paid..." true, Distinctive, but if we don't at least try we'll never know whether we can do it ourselves. Your description of what may be involved made me smile; you do make it sound very bothersome - but if that is enough to make you give up, my advice would be not to move to or buy property in Spain at all. Life could become very costly if we just pay someone else all the time to do our chores.

The €300 could include initial payments to set up contracts, it could just be a provision of funds, but I understood it to be the fee for performing the service. There could be additional charges involved - if it is an older property, there may be a requirement for a boletin which may mean the property has to be completely rewired first!

In my experience, as long as you can set aside a bit of time, it's not so hard to do these things yourself. Also, as Rickiebear found, the estate agent will normally assist with this (and they should, since they've made far more than €300 out of the deal and certainly have time on their hands!) so I would suggest that you at least give it a go. If at first you don't succeed - then pay someone else to do it!

Thank you Roberto .. yes I am with you.   And you are right the e300 does not include any initial payments!!  purely a scam oops I meant service ;-)

I think I will seek the advice of the agent who has been pretty good up until now (apart from the NIE scam err service!)

It is expensive, I agree with that, if it is only for the service. Try doing it yourself and don't let anybody take advantage of you, sure it will cost you nothing then and much better. ;-)