S
sps3001
Guest
ToTheHeights: Thanks for your message. I’d never given any thought about moving to the US. I’d heard it was very difficult to be allowed to stay, although I do have some distant relations living in South Carolina.
I’m always keeping an eye out for jobs, but where I live isn’t very industrial so my line of work here is pretty rare.
I went to university, studying electronic engineering in the 80’s and I was sponsored by hi-tech UK military supplier. (I can’t talk about this). All students were laid off, I’d completed 3 years of my 4 year degree course. I had to get work, my parents wouldn’t support me.
I did a couple of jobs and eventually set up a company with two business partners. We worked together for 20 years. I was IT director of that company for 12 years but I wanted a change, so moved to Spain although I continued to work for this company via telecommute as a consultant.
It went under in 2009, they’d tried to expand into Europe, just when the economy went bad. Luckily I just walked straight into this German run travel company.
This German outfit spoke of their high moral standards and ethics, but were too cheap to pay social security for me as an employee, forcing me to be self employed and to pay my own taxes and social security, which I did.
When one of the owners became ill, the client funds disappeared (I guess on hospital bills) then they hid from the authorities in Germany - hence my current situation. My lawyer wrote to them, but they never replied and the Spanish court just wanted cash I hadn´t got. I had a linkedIn profile, but I took it down when this German started stalking my profile. I have proof of at least one occasion where he sent a derogatory message about me to one of my contacts (it was one of my friends, who sent me his message back to me). I have no idea who else he’d contacted to try to rubbish me. LinkedIn couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything and there was no facility to stop him from viewing my profile, so I had to take my profile down completely. I’ve since made all my accounts with Facebook/Twitter etc completely private.
I count by blessing though, during that time, I learnt a lot about the travel industry and now, I am quite well known in the industry for my technical abilities.
When I was in London last year, I worked for a few weeks as consultant for a company who’d been setting up a travel firm. Some Russian millionaire had invested huge sums, easily over $2M. They’d got a team of developers and plush offices, but their product was useless. The developers were technically brilliant but had no business sense at all. They didn’t even understand the special tax rules which apply to travel. After 1 year they´d not made a single sale. The investor pulled the plug in the end.
With all this experience, it made perfect sense to me to set up my own company and do it for myself. Already, our sites are getting 500+ hits a day per site and look very professional.
We are taking bookings, just with really low margins mainly due to this greedy travel organisation forcing us to load our prices for their gain. Our sites run on smartphones too, but this travel organisation won’t allow me to offer any other payment method than the credit card system they want me to use. On phone, Google Wallet, PayPal make it so easy, but i´m just not allowed to use them.
We’ve had bookings from every corner of the global already, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Canada, USA, Mexico, Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Israel, Russia and virtual every European country. It’s pretty impressive considering we’ve only been trading for 3 months.
Even the travel trade have noticed us, we’ve had agencies wanting to work with us all over the place. Only yesterday, I was speaking with a travel agency in Colorado who’d seen us online. We get excursion providers contacting us virtually every day wanting to go on our excursions site.
In the last day or two, I think I’ve found a solution. I was given the name of a broker who could replace this travel organisation with a special insurance. I´ve had it checked without our suppliers, and they´re happy with it, so now it´s full steam ahead to cut out the cancer.
To give you an idea of the situation we face, consider an airport transfer for 4 passengers. The taxi may cost us $20. This travel organisation force us to add $5 per person, causing the base price to be $40 before we’ve even added our commission or anything to cover banking charges.
Under the new scheme they want just 1% - so that $20 taxi, plus the protection is just $20.20. A big difference from $40! It will change things completely for us if we can do this.
The other day I was feeling pretty low after working so hard and seemly getting nowhere. I have renewed hope now, there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
Thank you all, it means so much.
I’m always keeping an eye out for jobs, but where I live isn’t very industrial so my line of work here is pretty rare.
I went to university, studying electronic engineering in the 80’s and I was sponsored by hi-tech UK military supplier. (I can’t talk about this). All students were laid off, I’d completed 3 years of my 4 year degree course. I had to get work, my parents wouldn’t support me.
I did a couple of jobs and eventually set up a company with two business partners. We worked together for 20 years. I was IT director of that company for 12 years but I wanted a change, so moved to Spain although I continued to work for this company via telecommute as a consultant.
It went under in 2009, they’d tried to expand into Europe, just when the economy went bad. Luckily I just walked straight into this German run travel company.
This German outfit spoke of their high moral standards and ethics, but were too cheap to pay social security for me as an employee, forcing me to be self employed and to pay my own taxes and social security, which I did.
When one of the owners became ill, the client funds disappeared (I guess on hospital bills) then they hid from the authorities in Germany - hence my current situation. My lawyer wrote to them, but they never replied and the Spanish court just wanted cash I hadn´t got. I had a linkedIn profile, but I took it down when this German started stalking my profile. I have proof of at least one occasion where he sent a derogatory message about me to one of my contacts (it was one of my friends, who sent me his message back to me). I have no idea who else he’d contacted to try to rubbish me. LinkedIn couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything and there was no facility to stop him from viewing my profile, so I had to take my profile down completely. I’ve since made all my accounts with Facebook/Twitter etc completely private.
I count by blessing though, during that time, I learnt a lot about the travel industry and now, I am quite well known in the industry for my technical abilities.
When I was in London last year, I worked for a few weeks as consultant for a company who’d been setting up a travel firm. Some Russian millionaire had invested huge sums, easily over $2M. They’d got a team of developers and plush offices, but their product was useless. The developers were technically brilliant but had no business sense at all. They didn’t even understand the special tax rules which apply to travel. After 1 year they´d not made a single sale. The investor pulled the plug in the end.
With all this experience, it made perfect sense to me to set up my own company and do it for myself. Already, our sites are getting 500+ hits a day per site and look very professional.
We are taking bookings, just with really low margins mainly due to this greedy travel organisation forcing us to load our prices for their gain. Our sites run on smartphones too, but this travel organisation won’t allow me to offer any other payment method than the credit card system they want me to use. On phone, Google Wallet, PayPal make it so easy, but i´m just not allowed to use them.
We’ve had bookings from every corner of the global already, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Canada, USA, Mexico, Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Israel, Russia and virtual every European country. It’s pretty impressive considering we’ve only been trading for 3 months.
Even the travel trade have noticed us, we’ve had agencies wanting to work with us all over the place. Only yesterday, I was speaking with a travel agency in Colorado who’d seen us online. We get excursion providers contacting us virtually every day wanting to go on our excursions site.
In the last day or two, I think I’ve found a solution. I was given the name of a broker who could replace this travel organisation with a special insurance. I´ve had it checked without our suppliers, and they´re happy with it, so now it´s full steam ahead to cut out the cancer.
To give you an idea of the situation we face, consider an airport transfer for 4 passengers. The taxi may cost us $20. This travel organisation force us to add $5 per person, causing the base price to be $40 before we’ve even added our commission or anything to cover banking charges.
Under the new scheme they want just 1% - so that $20 taxi, plus the protection is just $20.20. A big difference from $40! It will change things completely for us if we can do this.
The other day I was feeling pretty low after working so hard and seemly getting nowhere. I have renewed hope now, there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
Thank you all, it means so much.