We first used LDLines back in Sat 29 August 2009 & I remember twittering at the time about how poor the service was and that they were obviously looking to be the Ryan Air of the English channel. I also said i’d never travel with them again due to the chaotic nature of the booking in process, loading process and the fact the facilities on the boat just weren’t up to scratch and today i eat a lot of humble pie!

I ended up on LDLines this time not by choice but by what turned out to be my own good fortune. I left it late this time to book a ferry for a quick renovation getaway and by that time the main players were asking around £150 / £180 for crossing, so i reluctantly booked with LDLines for £55 return and just figured i’d sit here with gritted teeth..

On arriving this time booking-in was slick, loading was now organised and not like the wild west park anywhere we’d had previously encountered and the boat left only 10 minutes late and zipped across in the promised hour. Previously it was 50 minutes late leaving and it seemed like we limped across in “normal” ferry time (we’ve left dead on time this return crossing).

The ships facilities were all up to speed, the (very) small duty free shop was open & both front and mid facilities were also open. This is so night and day compared to what we’d experienced before and it didn’t stop there!

On arriving at Boulonge you are no longer in town, at the bottom of a round about going through a check-in desk that was a glorified porta cabin, this is all new. LDLines look like they have taken home in a totally new birth and part of the port thats a fair distance away from the old place. By moving to the new facilities they’ve really staked their intention to provide a new quality of service across the channel and from this experience they are achieving that.

Not everything unfortunately is roses, we spoke to more than a few people who either ran later than usual for the boat or were just plain confused that they’d moved. Everyone agrees that this is a lot easier but the website and tickets MUST be updated to let everyone know of the move. For us when we arrived and unloaded we like a lot of people had no idea where we were and you can forget the SatNav having any idea where this place is. To help you and LDLines i’ll be posting my POI (Point of interest) and the long and latitude that you can pump into your SatNav.

I will be writing to LD to see if they want to comment on this post as i’d really like to understand what they did to turn the whole travel experience around and i’ll also be rubbishing my own Tweet saying i’ll never travel with them again…

LDLines now have a guaranteed repeat customer, lets hope they do frequent traveller or positive blog discounts

Links :
www.LDLines.com
www.LDLines.co.uk

Our plans have always been to place a good quality solid wooden floor in the main living space. The living area will be a high traffic area and somewhat of the centre of the house so whatever goes down needs to be durable, comfortable and fit with the feel of the house, and we ended up going for a “scrapped” wood as the unevenness of it along with some nicks and dents will help blend when the kids drop their toys on it.

In the UK we seem to be both blessed and plagued with cheap DIY options for wood laminate flooring options which has sprung up from the renovation boom of the past 10 years. I’m sure this is great for many people, in fact we have this on the floor in our current home and I have come to hate it! The cheap feel, the sound as you walk on it, the chipping of the covering etc etc it just doesn’t feel right but with prices anywhere from £8psm i can see why people do it. But it’s not for us, and that leaves “real wood”..

“Real wood” solutions in the UK don’t come cheap, and in France they certianly don’t come cheap.

Of course it’s not all about price but their has to be a compromise reached since the budget isn’t infinite and wow how times change! When we first started looking for this kind of quality floor we were being quoted £90psm + & but thankfully  there are now suppliers online that’ll supply from £50psm. So here is some maths.

The lounge area is 7m x 11m ( 23ftx36ft approx ) giving a square area of 77sqm or 828Sft.

Cost @ £90psm = £6930 / $11365 ( @ £1 = $1.64)
Cost @ £50psm = £3850 / $6338

and this is where Twitter came in….

Searching around online and searching keyboards (hash tags) on Twitter we found @HardwoodForLess (honest i was searching flooring) a username of Lumber Liquidators based in the US. The name was familiar to the wife who swears she’s seen them on Extreme Makeover Home Edition (don’t hate her for her viewing sins). Being in the U.S. we couldn’t see them being of much use to us except maybe for some inspiration however  a bit of reading & we find they ship to the UK but is it going to be worth it?

Looking at the handscraped selections we found exactly what we were looking for. Lumber Liquidators call it Virginia Mill Works 1/2″ x 5″ Potomac Plank Handscraped Pre-Finished Natural and it comes in at $4.29/sq.ft.

Again here comes the maths :
Cost @ $4.29/sq.ft. x 828/sq.ft =

$3974.59 / £2414.33

But how do you get in contact with a company that only supply a 1-800 number (Lumber Liquidators you NEED to change this) ? After a quick “tweet” out asking how i can do this using Skype i got a reply that using Skype i just simply need to dial 001 800 427 3966 . I managed to get through on the freephone number and there i was on the phone for 15 minutes to the U.S. for free speaking with an extrenely helpful salesman by the name of Robert Dworkin (details to follow) who then dropped the bombshell.

SHIPPING TO THE UK IS FREE!

Basically their is $150 tax and fees on the price, it’s loaded on the boat with all the other wood their shipping and then just go pick it up at Southampton and pay the import duty (@4.9% and then vat @ 15% ) and we take it away!

So with shipping, VAT, import duty how so the figures really stack up now ? (more maths)

Cost £2414
Import Duty – £108.63
VAT @ 15% – 362.1
Total Shipped to the UK = £2883.73

That’s a few £ under a £1000 saving and this can only get better as the exchange rate goes up & before i twist the arm of LL for a discount

Like any renovation, every saving is a bonus and that £1000 is basically the cost of the windows in the 3 new dormers we are creating and that’s just another reason why we are sold on Lumber Liquidators as a supplier.

What about the quality of the wood ?
Of course as yet we’ve not seen it, touched it or smelt it so why would we be so crazy as to risk spending all that money on something we’d not seen?  Well that’s where Rob has came in, a few emails with some suggestions of flooring and we’ve got samples winging their way to us at £0. Seriously the service we are getting from Lumber Liquidators is fantastic and once again I have to talk about the attitude of internet suppliers over traditional suppliers. Lumber Liquidators have taken the giant step to get their message out using Twitter, Facebook and its website and it’s paying off as we’ll be spending money with them that they would otherwise had not got.

Traditional suppliers really need to start to embrace technology, social media just as much as old media, print and shows more and more people of our generation (tech savy 30 somethings) are now shopping this way and i can only compliment what Lumber Liquidators have done. KUDOS to you all.

Well done Lumber Liquidators and please buy Rob a coffee!

Here are their details :

Website : http://www.lumberliquidators.com/
Twitter ID : @HardwoodForLess
How to get them on Skype : Dial 001 800-476-0007 x 7549 (you may need SkypeOut credit)
Who do you want to speak to : Robert Dworkin / rdworkin@lumberliquidators.com

We will of course keep you updated with what we diceide to buy in the end and the whole process of shipping, collecting and fitting. Watch this space

If you remember our first set of blog posts from Feb 13th about the storm damage (here, here & gallery here) from this point it’s been like pushing water up a hill to get the whole insurance process sorted. And there are some lessons we’d like to share with you.

Firstly I can’t stress enough that you need to get yourself a SKYPE ACCOUNT!
One of the main issues we ran into was that all the insurance numbers are local rate numbers in France. These CANNOT be dialed from outside France so straight away you are hitting a barrier to even start your claim process.
This is where having friends on the ground helps however a SKYPE OUT account where you can call landline numbers from your computer (or iPhone in our case), and the FREE numbers remain FREE (see small chart below or full list here)

• France Premium Rate – 0891 – £ 0.194
• France Premium Rate – 0892 – £ 0.250
• France Premium Rate – 0893 – £ 0.250
• France – Shared Cost – £ 0.130
• France-Toll Free – £ 0.00

So first tip is SKYPE, get yourself an account now it’s not just for computer to computer calls.

The 2nd issue is the length in time it takes quote to come back. I’m not going to harp on about this as this seems a regualr issue of mine with the total lack of percieved desire to get new work from French builders.

Anyway that processed took just under 2 months to get right & we got our first quote back around 4 weeks after we asked the two builders to attend site. The 2nd quote came in around 8 weeks, by this time we’d submitted the original quote to the insurance due to these delays.

The two quotes varied in costs by the tune of  €2,500 and in what each builder felt needed doing. I’ll be publishing the quotes shortly for you to compare, but the long and the short of it, the insurance company took the €8,500 quote and proceeded to work off this. Then after discussions back an forth with their “experts” they settled for €6800 which lucky for us covers the 2nd quote that finally arrived from our preferred builder.

With the payment agreed we’ll be getting the first payment of €6,300 into our bank any time now, and the final €500 on completion of work. So that’s part one completed, now lets see how long it actually takes the builder to do the work.

What we’ve learned

• If like us you’re not actually in France and are trying to do this remote then good contacts are a must. For us a great bank manager is a life saver, create and keep your contacts.

• Skype was a fantastic service. Using Skype our bill for all the calling we did came out at €4 that is far far less than we were paying before.

• A good reliable builder is a MUST.  Using our preferred builder we’ve actually managed to blend some of the work with starting repairs on the house, but you really have to sit on these guys to motivate them.

• There appears to be a remote project management business opportunity in France. If we could have paid someone locally to handle this for us we would have done. Between going back and forth to deal with this our travel costs have been around £600, so for a €500 fee i would have gladly paid out to have someone on the ground local so this.

When it comes to front doors, sliding doors and windows the market is flooded with potential suppliers so to stand out from the crowd you’ve got to bring something special to the table.  So far I have to say Kloeber have the most fantastic customer service we have encountered. The products themselves look great, feel solid and are made to our measurements but it’s been the attitude of their staff and their response times we’ve been blown away by.

Click for AudioPost

You may remember on the “Grand Designs” audio review we talked about going to see another company at the show called ID Systems.  Now we’d seen ID Systems brochure and liked the look of the products but when we arrived to speak to them we had the most shocking customer service, with all their staff being available but seemed to have no time to talk to us. We ended up leaving empty handed with cheque book firmly closed.

Over the hall from ID were Kloeber.  On arriving at the stand we were made to feel welcome & the representative actually spent time listening to what our needs where and looking at our plans before he started to talk.

Understanding your customers needs has to be the first thing you do (IDS Please take note!)

We’ve got some strange sized windows we want, from the “air hole” windows in the front and rear of the house at 500mmx350mm to the long field view beroom window at 300mm x 2550mm and that’s before we get to the large front and rear opening doors of 3200mmx3100mm , so we go from the tiny to the large.  Kloeber took the time to listen, advise and ultimately quote for us. The quote took a short time to come back and we are about to make some changes to some of the windows as the building plans have moved on but what struck us was inexpensive the doors and windows were. 

Looking at the product at the show the finished item looks fantastic,  feels 100% solid and just really inspires us that it’ll last. In fact we’ve been so surprised we have actually increased the number of windows in the house and changed some of the sizing. We have complete faith that we can now be more adverntour with our requests knowing we’ve found a supplier that’ll be able to deliver. 

Click for Kloeber Quote

Attached is the quote they sent us through. This is already out of date with the latest changes we’ve made and we have put in the request to get this updated and I’ll post that as soon as we get it.  Kloeber really did themselves a great service at “Grand Designs Lives” and from looking maybe for them to supply just the large doors they’ve gained every window in our house and very possibly the Grange as well.

Have you used Kloeber for your windows and doors? If so please drop us a comment below as we’d love to hear from you.