Paphos Life

Happy in Cyprus wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2017 6:35 pm

Mark wrote: ↑Mon Nov 06, 2017 4:31 pm...so I now pay my bill in the Cyta shop in the Mall, much easier and quicker.

Easier and and quicker still - though you may not wish to do it this way of course - but CYTA bills can be paid by D/D straight from your bank account. Doesn't involve any legwork or parking then.

Not sure if the above method would attract any bank charges but there is an alternative. Get your bills delivered to your email address and then pay by jccsmart. You can organise delivery of your bills this way if you go to your CYTA web page (assuming you have one). This way you can keep tabs on your bill and it can also be paid from abroad.

HiC,

Before moving permanently to Cyprus I used to pay my water bill by Direct Debit via the Alpha Bank as my local municipality was not hooked up with jccsmart (and still isn't). As we were only in Cyprus for 3 weeks at a time my water bills were sometimes less than €10 and I was being charged more than that for the privilege of paying by DD.

That was the only reason for my posting, so that someone else did not fall into the same trap, even though it is possible that this practice has now been stopped. Better to make people aware than to remain silent and have them incur possible bank charges, wouldn't you agree?

You have read Varkys' post incorrectly HIC. He said that it is his municipality that is not hooked up to JCC not the Alpha Bank who of course are.

We used to pay our bills online as and when we received the paper bill, our phone and broadband was with PrimeTel and our monthly bill was sent to us by email.

HIC, off topic I know but for info the EU wide guarantee stands at €100k which for UK financial institutions is covered by the FSCS scheme. The limit used to be £85k but was lowered to £75k in summer of 2015 when Sterling exchange rate was high, then raised back to £85k again in January to account for lower exchange rates.

Ian

Happy in Cyprus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2017 6:40 pm The US banking system collapsed and took half of Europe down with it? Tell me more, I must have missed it. Precisely which 50% of European banks went down?

Lloyd, I think 'mouse' was referring to the US sub-prime loans crisis a decade ago, which seemed to have global knock-on effects. Some UK banks had to be rescued by the taxpayers, which still remains the case to this day...

And who remembers the very attractive interest rates that the Icelandic banks were offering back then on deposit accounts? Dozens, if not hundreds of UK local councils had £billions tied up in such accounts. They lost the lot, when Iceland declared itself bankrupt...

Simple answer for a council to address this minor peccadillo: Just increase everybody's Council Tax the following year!

They didn't lose all of it. Gordon Brown invoked extremely dodgy anti terror laws to keep some of it in the UK.

https://www.ft.com/content/abf583de-954 ... 0077b07658

And later...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... Brown.html

I have to pay and subscibe to read your first FT link, Dom. The second Telegraph link is not that revealing. AL will see what he can unravel from this old can of worms in the morning...

Just before all this shite hit the fan, I was on the verge of moving my life savings from IOM to Iceland for a better return on interest each month (just like UK councils did). Glad I listened to my 6th sense whilst sleeping on this idea that night!

The devil you know is better than the one you don't

ps: Better still, let's put it to bed tonight?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%8 ... ial_crisis