However things got worse.

During our visit at the 'handover' the promoter led us to believe that all snags would be fixed within a month and we had a further month to find any further problems and let them know.

We decided to pay up the final 5% and that all we could do was hope and trust.

HOW MANY PEOPLE SUBSEQUENTLY TOLD US WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE PAID THAT FINAL 5% - NOR EVEN HAVE SIGNED UP WITH SUCH A PROMOTER IN THE FIRST PLACE!  HINDSIGHT IS A WONDERFUL THING.

As soon as we returned from our ‘holiday’ we began the fruitless and frustrating task of trying to contact the promoters.

They ignored the majority of my emails.

In order to get a response I sent a letter recorded delivery. They replied to this but were completely evasive and did not answer my questions.

Luckily I have cousins who are French and they agreed to call the promoters to try and get some information and sense out of them. I speak French but am not bilingual and it is extremely difficult to sort out these types of problem in a foreign language, particularly with people who make no effort whatsoever to make this easier, on the contrary, make it as difficult as possible.

My cousins made several phone calls to the promoters but always met with evasive and non-committal statements.

The developers did agree to sort out the minor problems which they listed on the snag list but have not once apologised for the problems or the lateness and bearing in mind that this apartment should have been FINISHED two years ago they are obviously completely unconcerned about our feelings of disappointment, frustration and helplessness – particularly as they now have all of our money.

• The fact that there is not adequate lighting in the apartment is excused by the promoters by stressing that no precise lighting arrangements were specified in the plans.   This is true but surely it is not unreasonable to expect a light in the eating area!!! Instead of specifying anything, the extremely vague contract says that lights and electrics will be placed in a sensible and well-thought out way.
  
  
• The fact that they design and quality is poor is excused by the promoters by their vague contractual phrases—which actually say that fittings will be of high quality.
  
  
• And the fact that the tiles have still not been fixed is excused by the fact that they are getting estimates to have them redone and the estimates are too expensive!!!!