AJ

A Madeiran friend recommended Angela at NEWCO when we were looking to move from the UK. We sent her examples of houses for sale that we liked (and didn’t like), and she quickly pulled together at least half a dozen that would interest us. On our next visit to Madeira she drove us around Funchal to view the properties, sharing her excellent knowledge of the areas and the country’s real estate market.

Towards the end of the first day of house tours, she showed us the most amazing house – a designer dream that was in our price range. We looked at a few more the next day, but that amazing house won out. We made an offer which was accepted, and just a month later (January 2023) signed the deed and got the keys. Incredibly smooth and quick compared to buying a property in England!

As we only know a few words in Portuguese, Angela was invaluable in researching all sorts of details for us, sorting out the contracts and explaining how the process works in Madeira. She’s also been super helpful post-purchase with essentials like getting electricity and water accounts setup, banking, names of contractors, etc. We never would have got from browsing to buying to actually living in our new Madeira home this fast without her. And at all stages we definitely felt she was on our side, which was very reassuring coming into this new ‘foreign’ country.

NEWCO’s immigration team led by Claudia have also been super at guiding us through the Portuguese visa process. As with any country, there is lots of bureaucracy involved – and they’ve helped us every step of the way to ensure our application was solid and submitted correctly. We’ve met everyone at NEWCO working our case in person, and it’s nice not dealing with some faceless organisation (SEF provides more than enough of that!). The vagaries and timelines of Portugal’s government are out of our control, but with Claudia’s help we’re confident things will work out.

There’s plenty of estate and visa agencies in Portugal like this. We’re very glad we went with NEWCO for its complete range of services, and smaller, personal touch.

Went for a PCR test at London City Airport on 12-March at 9:30am, got the results by 6pm same day. And that was just their standard service. Obviously a quiet day at the lab.

One small niggle. The results seem to by default say 'Nasopharyngeal or Oropharyngeal (Nose or
Throat)', but the actual test was nose AND throat. Some countries want both, so that AND is important.

Other Day 2 at-home test providers:
Do test at home. Pop into any postbox. Done.

Randox Day 2 nightmare:
Do test at home.
Spend HOURS in a quest for one of their elusive drop boxes.

Ridiculously few in central London (small town, perhaps you've heard of it?). The drop box sort of near me in Southwark on their list when I purchased the tests just disappeared off said list when it came time for me to return them.
Post Office won't accept Covid kits, and the smaller Post Offices don't sell decent parcel postage (e.g. 'Tracked 24') that will get them there in time if dropped in a postbox. Quotes from DPD, UPS, etc. were all around £15 to Northern Ireland.

So I spent my morning running out to east end London to drop these stupid kits off, vs. across the road at my local postbox for other providers.

Will never use Randox again!

Although ACE is great for cold hard cash in their shops, their ACE-FX Prepaid MasterCard is just a joke.
It's obviously farmed-out to some other company (BancTec I believe), who so far have not been able to change my home address TEN days after my request to do so. The web site for loading cash on your card is frighteningly amateur, missing even basic functionality like address changes or viewing which debit card you have registered with them. To be honest I don't even feel secure in using their site, which is of course the only way to load money on the card.