We’ve been home just over a week. As I type this, Mike has his readers on and he’s aggressively trying to navigate the electric companies website-in Italian. If you recall my previous blog, I was telling you we had electric, but no water upon arriving at our new home. In communication with the Attorney’s assistant, Linda, we found out it normally takes a few days to turn on service. Of course we were dealing with a company that required additional time. The deed was signed in Italy on 1/28/2021 and we were trying to go asap. We were looking at flights, basically going by fare. We found the best fare the end of February. Perfect, we assumed the utilities would be all set by then. NOPE.
Things to make sure you are handing ahead of time OR at least from the convenience of home, where you have wifi, google translate and other helpful tools. We were in Italy for a month, we left without wifi. Just getting a modem was a difficult task. I still have yet to reach out to Vodafone to find out why our new account was blocked. In the store in Rieti, the lady Miriam told me there was another person with an account in my name -who didn’t pay her bill. I laughed and then pleaded that I did not have Vodafone before, I’ve never lived in Italy before and it was never resolved. Apparently, the Corporate office blocked my new account until I pay the bill. I’ll attempt to reach them next week. Wish me luck.
The Attorney’s office set up the utilities (Electric and Water) for us. Well we never received the water bill. We did receive the electric bill (at the house in Italy). In the month there we never received a water bill, so I reached back out to the Attorney’s office. According to LInda, her assistant who handled our account no longer works there. Why would she. I explained we don’t have a way to access the water account, we don’t even know who they are or our account number. She is taking care of this and requesting they send the bill here to our home address in the USA. Or we can receive them via email to pay. I’ll update how that works out.
The electric is a different story. They sent us the bill to the house in Italy while there…great! NOPE. We received an email the other day, that we tried to translate in Italian. We still didn’t understand the content of the email. I reached out to our neighbors in Italy and sent the email to them to translate it better for us. They said it appears a 3d party contacted them and now we should cancel the log in and redo our profile?! What? Why? So, Mike is still attempting to complete this. Mike is now drinking a glass of wine lol. Mike is attempting to navigate an Italian electric companies website to delete our previous profile while drinking wine and watching the bruins….in Florida, USA.
If purchasing your dream home in Italy is in your horizon….please take my advice and get your utilities all set BEFORE you arrive. Pour yourself a glass of wine, ok….bring over the bottle. Then, install google chrome, which is suppose to translate to English ….every time. Have 2 phones going, and be prepared to get completely aggravated, frustrated and annoyed at the utility company-the water company and the wifi company. Thank God we don’t have gas to deal with. The kitchen stovetop runs off of propane and a tank. God help me when that runs out. I guarantee now, it will be while I’m there and Smartie is here. At least I’m not lighting the 60’s stove /oven contraption thing.. aka the explosion waiting to happen.
*Ok, he just got an email confirmation they accepted our request to delete our previous profile. Now it says we will receive a call from one of their operators…..omg. God help us with that.
We don’t plan on having cable at the house. There was a small flat screen left by the previous owners. Mike plans on just bringing a roku box over next time. This will allow us to have any apps we use here at home, providing we have wifi. Vodafone better figure this one out!
Ok update 2…
It was too much to deal with yesterday. We did however receive an email from the Attorney’s office. Linda’s new assistant is handling the utilities. The water company said there was no bill sent to the home. The previous owner paid February’s bill. The next bill will be sent out in June. And we should be able to pay that online .We shall see.
The electric-
Apparently the company where we established service with, is transferring to another company. Well of course it is. However… Linda’s assistant is now handling the issue and apparently …she will be able to get us a 30-40% discount on our electric bill with the new company for 2 years! What? How does that happen LOL. Not complaining. It’s just funny, that we would not even know if we didn’t get logged out and had to resubmit documents (passport, Codice Fiscale & bill) to redo our customer profile. Who knew? We didn’t. We don’t. We know nothing LOL. That is why I’m trying to help you… save you from all these little aggregating situations. You are welcome. Mike added: “that nobody else will have, only we deal with this kinda crap.”
We were told the electric is expensive, so I’m very curious to see our actual bill. Granted nobody is there now, but the month we were, we were running everything. So stay tuned on that!!
That’s about it for utilities- Vodafone next week, so I’m sure there will be a ridiculous story to share about my previous bill, in a foreign country that I never knew I even had.
Ciao friends!! Keep searching for that perfect house in Italy!! Don’t you want to be aggregated, yet completely blessed at the same time… just like us ☺️.
Enjoy some photos our our village & surrounding area. Mike & I took a ride just outside the village one day, and came across this beautiful cemetery. The photos of the mountains are from the top of our Main Street. Seeing snow capped mountains off in the distance is a gorgeous sight.
