GrandpaGrumble

Worldcare is another company that will do travel insurance for temporary residents, and have a reasonable rep on productreview for dealing with claims. I've bought from them a couple of times though (touch wood) have never had to make a claim. Used Insure And Go to cover the belongings when we moved to Oz, they seemed fine too, though again we fortunately didn't need to make a claim.

Cheers again for the advice and moral support. I think a lot will depend now on how the agent/vendor respond. The house is currently priced on the basis of being in immaculate condition, so I guess there will have to be some movement there.

Thanks - that's food for thought. Being very risk averse I'd probably want to have the treatment anyway. Though I guess you still need to have regular inspections even if you have had the treatment. As Tink says, all relatively small things that add up to a lot, ongoing costs in this case. Yes, improving the subfloor ventilation was another thing that the inspection recommended. Looks like that's a bit more than just putting in a few airbricks like in the UK.

Thanks everybody for sharing your experiences, knowledge and opinions. So far we've just had a general building + pest inspection. They weren't termite specialists but did seem pretty thorough. They had a termite detecting radar device that didn't find anything, so touch wood (as it were) they aren't active. Though I guess we won't know for sure till we have had a specialist inspection. In general, do people in prone areas tend to have their houses termite treated as a precaution, or only if they've already been attacked? Did you bother to get your house in Sydney treated, for instance, ScottieGirl?

Thanks Tink, the info + link were v useful. So we'd be looking at an average ongoing cost of around $250-$700 a year, depending on size of house and how often it'd need doing, for a barrier treatment with Termidor. Guess the next step is to get the current damage assessed properly ...

I'm sure this isn't the first time this has been asked, but I couldn't find any recent threads about it. We've just had the building & pest inspection back on a house that we're hoping to buy, and it's shown up "moderate to extensive" termite damage in the roof (and garden fence etc.), plus evidence of termite workings at the foundation wall (sub-floor). No evidence found of live termites, and damage not structural at first blush - though the basic inspection doesn't include the invasive tests that would be necessary to tell for sure. There's evidence that it's been treated in the past, but no information, one way or the other, about treatments from the current owners, who've been there for over 10 years. This raises various questions. Do we go ahead with the purchase or not? Presumably we'd be wanting the more detailed inspection first? If it turns out that the damage isn't structural, how feasible would it be to deal with the problem in the future? E.g. how much do treatments cost, do they work, how often do you need them? Can we get the existing timbers treated to prevent further attacks? As always, any advice would be very welcome. Thanks!

Cheers for that, though they do have a bad rep on productreview, despite not being owned by either Telstra or TPG. [As far as I can tell, it's still owned by the local government consortium that set it up in the first place.] http://www.productreview.com.au/p/southern-phone.html But, as I say, anecdotal evidence is one reason for asking on the forum. Also, people I trust have actually recommended Telstra to me, for mobile phones at least, despite the terrible reputation that they have. But most telecom companies have terrible reputations. I guess it's the same here as in the UK, in the end you just have to take pot luck and hope for the best.

Thanks again. Good to know that other people trust/use the productreview site ... which, incidentally, reports that the customer service at Westnet has gone down the pan since they were taken over by TPG ... a pattern seems to be emerging here.

Thanks for the input, everybody, though it's not sounding very promising! Looks like most providers are active in my area, which is reasonably urban. I'll read up about why nbn has become farcical, but in any case I guess that you don't have the option to go back to ADSL if nbn is already in your area. No, I wouldn't need unlimited as we don't plan to do any streaming or whatever. 100Gb a month would probably be plenty. Most providers seem to just revert to an extremely slow connection if you go over the limit anyway (rather than cutting you off altogether, or charging the earth). Though a decent line speed would be good - most providers seem to default to 12 Mbps which seems a little slow especially given that nbn is a fibre network, as I understand it. Price is one factor for me, but not the only factor. I'd rather pay a bit more in exchange for a good service, good customer service, and the ability to keep a degree of control over what goes out of my bank account. I don't know how reliable it is, for the reasons given in my first post, but I've found this review site: http://www.productreview.com.au/c/internet-service-providers.html Based on that, I'm thinking about going with either Boom (which has the highest rating) or Internode (which has the highest rating of any company with more than a couple hundred reviews - in fact, of those companies it's the only one for which the Excellent/Good/OK reviews outnumber the Bad/Terrible ones - for most of the other ones, the negative reviews are vastly more numerous). They both have no-contract options. Internode let you pay by debit card as well as credit card (and charge a smaller fee for doing so), which is good as I don't have an Australian credit card. [Touch wood, apart from houses I've never had to borrow money in order to buy anything.] I haven't checked that detail with Boom yet. Potential drawbacks are that Boom is a small company based in Melbourne, which is not where I live, and that Internode has been taken over by iiNet, which has terrible reviews - though evets has had a decent experience with them. One reason for asking on the forum in the first place is to get that kind of anecdote or alternative opinion. Of course I might be being naive in giving any credence to the productreview website, but what can you do? Many of the negative reviews, and some of the positive ones, sound genuine to me.

We're just about to hook our new (rented) home up to the internet, but can't decide which provider to go with. All the ones I've looked up have had absolutely terrible reviews! Of course these reviews could be self-selecting, or misleading, or even put up by rival companies (though I didn't get that impression). So, can anybody recommend a good provider? In terms of ease and speed of getting connected, customer service, connection speeds etc.? And price of course, though I guess you sometimes get what you pay for. We're in NSW, and we're told the property is connected to the nbn (whatever that is). Won't be needing extras like mobile phones (already sorted) or pay TV (don't want it). Since we're renting initially, we just want to pay for the service from month to month, don't want to tie in to long contracts or anything. Oh and I also prefer to avoid direct debits if possible, having had bad experiences with them in the past ... especially with telecom companies.

Thanks again to everybody for all the helpful info, which made it a lot easier for us to find our way into the healthcare system here. So far, so good.

Ah, I see, so you're exempt from the penalty if you purchase health insurance within a year of arriving (or, to be precise, signing up for Medicare), even if you'd otherwise be too old. That's good to know. It was actually mentioned in one of the links that I think was posted earlier, I just hadn't registered it. That link also says that the penalty only applies to hospital cover, i.e. presumably not to more basic policies only covering things like ambulance rides, and gives other details of how it's calculated. Another question arising from that link is that it mentions "blue" vs. "green" Medicare cards. I can probably Google this for myself (though I am a bit busy, in the throes of packing etc. ...), but I wonder what that's all about? And as nobody has talked about "medical repatriation" (which was mentioned as a health insurance must-have in the materials we had through from our employers-to-be), I guess that's not really a big deal? Thanks again to everybody. The more information we have about this kind of thing, the better.

Hey, thanks folks for all the really helpful information. It's useful also to get different opinions and hear about different experiences. I guess the next things I need to research are: What are "gap fees"? What's public provision like where we're moving (NSW), how many bulk billing GPs are there here? What are the tax implications for us? Are ambulances covered by the rates (or land tax in NSW)? And the one-year window for deciding on whether to take out any health insurance, e.g.what happens if you miss the window? It does all sound very complicated.

Thanks for the quick replies. We're not going to the back of beyond so will definitely think about TPQ's suggestion. I've had a look at "platinum extra" and it seems to be contrasted with "hospital cover". Is the hospital cover the same as in the UK, i.e. you'll get to go into an NHS/Medicare hospital, and won't be charged for it, if you're not covered, but will get to go to a fancier hospital, possibly more quickly (and might still have to pay extra) if you are? And can I take it that if you haven't bought at least "extra" cover, you'll be charged if you ever need to go in an ambulance? Loulou's post reminds me that I forgot to ask about our toddler. Would his dental care be covered by Medicare, or would we need to pay/insure for his dentistry as well? [And thanks in particular for the indication of how much dental treatment costs if you're not insured.] I've also spotted one or two other relevant threads now, and have had a quick look at them. All sounds very complicated, with bulk billing, claiming back unpredictable amounts of money etc.! I guess bulk billing GPs are like NHS dentists in the UK, you can get to see one in theory but not always in practice, depending on where you live?

This is a pretty basic question which I'm sure has been asked before, so apologies if that's the case (I did try searching). We're moving to Australia shortly, from the UK, under a 444/461 combination (NZ passport holder + family). I think we'll be entitled to Medicare under the reciprocal arrangements, and I've read that it's not compulsory to buy any additional health cover unless that is stipulated on your visa, which it isn't. But, assuming that's true, is it sensible anyway to buy extra health cover on top of what's provided by Medicare? If so, what level of cover would people recommend? Our prospective employer's information pack mentioned "medical repatriation", would that be a minimal thing? And what sort of organisations/companies might be the best to go to for health insurance?