My understanding was that Collos aka Andy Bairsto is another ex-pat but English is his mother tongue. Perhaps too long in the Fatherland leads to extremely long one sentence paragraphs. I hope not.

I am half and half and have been based in Germany since the late seventies ,German is my first language and I was never any good at English language not much better at with the German equivelant.

I am half and half and have been based in Germany since the late seventies ,German is my first language and I was never any good at English language not much better at with the German equivelant.

My compliments, Collos, your English is admirable as it is your second language and far better than that of many who have been born and bred here (and probably have a piece of paper which says they have passed GCSE in the language).

On business trips abroad I was always impressed with the fluency in English of our customers in Germany and Scandinavia and slightly ashamed at the generally poor standard in other languages which we have here.

Ditto for the compliments, Although I am fluent in french, family of belgian origin a couple of generations ago, most french think i am swiss or german, (is my accent that bad?) but as galileo says, I am inpressed when travelling in europe at how few people in business don't speak english, seems to be a mandatory requirement for customer facing personnel regardless of sector. However I can manage to make our german compatriots smile when i say carefully that i speak german like a spanish cow, wirh apologies. And to the french, Naturellement, I am gallois not gaulois!

And for the OP, be paranoid when it comes to dealing with DVLA, send recorded delivery or proof of postage at least, it is usually cheaper. And, unless the car was /is a real bargain, be careful in future, How has it panned out by the way?

Edited by oldroverboy. on 09/01/2014 at 12:03