In a previous post I wrote a review in which I told you about the general experience in Porto. Here it is:
After 10 months of living in Porto, it seems that the bad things are winning over the good ones.
Diego says that “the Portuguese dream didn’t last a year.”
Let’s start with this reality: in Portugal negative reviews are not managed; the company “reports” them and they are automatically eliminated. If they can’t remove them, they harass you and threaten you with a complaint. Therefore, in Portugal you cannot trust Google evaluations.
Intimidation and harassment are the first options for companies when you dare to complain about bad service.
In July we were looking for a used car doing our best not to be scammed. Even so, the company Rocha Automóveis did not deliver the car as stipulated in the contract. They insisted that we took the car like that and when we refused to take a defective car, they refused to return the thousand euros of the reservation. I will tell you about this in another post, but what I want to point out here is that they were not satisfied with having stolen a thousand euros from us, and threatened to steal more money through their lawyers “for the cost of the repairs” (repairs that they never did).
Let’s continue with the situation of our house, which I have told you about in so many posts. So far, we know that the Municipal Chamber of Porto does absolutely nothing against the former owners of my house who did illegal works, built a part of the house illegally and for years defrauded with taxes since they never declared the actual meters of the house.
In any normal country, those criminals would already be fried with fines.
The Municipal Chamber’s excuse is that they can only do something if a neighbor denounces, and they catch people red-handed doing illegal works.
I denounced one of the many illegal works and nothing happened. They finished renovating an entire 4-story building without the Municipal Chamber deigning to make an appearance.
When I was visiting houses in the summer of 2023, already with the experience I had, I realized that all the houses I visited were in an illegal situation. Completely renovated houses without a construction license that were “exempt from everything” or continued to rely on the law that says, “that houses prior to 1951 do not need a license to use.”
The funniest thing was when you asked if the house had everything in order, they answered “The house is from before 51 and the renovation works did not change the structure, we only built a new basement; but hey, all the houses in this area have a basement”.
Translation: the house was renovated entirely without a license from the Municipal Chamber and to top it off, they built a basement illegally. But since everyone else does the same, nothing happens.
Every real estate agent has a very nice play on words to tell you without telling you that the house is illegal. In addition, as the renovations are done in the dark and no one issues an invoice because no one wants to pay taxes, the works that have been done do not have any type of guarantee.
Since anyone can now get a real estate agency license, imagine the circus that is the management and sale of a property.
You already saw what happened to me with Maxvillage. Of the three real estate agents, none had any idea of the papers that had to be requested to verify that the house was okay. They couldn’t have advised us worse.
Illegality, scams, and fraud are normal in Porto.
If they get caught absolutely nothing happens.
That is why people move illegally, because they have everything to win. They save on licensing in the Municipal Chamber and the expenses that this entails, they save on the architect who must do the project, they save on property taxes, and they save on VAT.
Think that if you want to renovate your house correctly, you have to pay around 6,000 euros to the architect to do the project for the Municipal Chamber; In addition, you must pay to register and pay again when it is approved.
It is perfectly understandable why people do everything illegally.
Last year when I told people that I had been scammed, that the house was illegal and that I could not sell it in the future, they all told me the same thing: “you are going to sell the house without problems because everyone here is corrupt”.
One of the ADENE experts told me not to worry, that the next notary would also make the contract without problems because his colleague had done it when he sold it to me and that they were not going to create conflict between them.
He also told me that the fault of the people doing everything illegally lay with the Municipal Chamber and the bureaucracy that existed. Today, when I have been living in Porto for 10 months, I agree with him.
People only do things legally in the center of Porto because it is only there that the Municipal Chamber does surveillance.
I have already mentioned that people also do the renovation works without billing anything. So no one pays VAT or taxes.
People do not want to work if they must issue an invoice.
It happened to me many times that someone was recommended to me and when I asked if they issued invoices, they did not answer again.
This is the perfect formula for fraud: the worker does not invoice you and leaves everything wrong, you go to complain to the competent body, which is the IMPIC, and it turns out that they cannot do anything because you do not have an invoice.
Who penalizes these people? Nobody.
Real estate agents also try to convince you to pay the commission in cash and not to ask for an invoice because that way you save 23%.
The maximum shock was when consulting with other lawyers and they themselves were making excuses not to issue the invoice.
If this is how things are with lawyers, what is left for the rest of the people?
Now that we are talking about lawyers, solicitors, notaries, and other personnel in the field of law, I have found that the vast majority are real gangsters. If it occurs to you to complain and leave a negative review, they will immediately harass and intimidate you and maybe even sue you because it costs them no money to file a complaint.
Then there is the issue that people give the price without VAT when that is illegal in Spain, I don’t know how the legislation is in this regard in Portugal.
In the 10 months that I have been in Porto, I have realized that they are experts in deleting negative reviews and, of course, in threatening you if they fail to delete the review. With few exceptions, those who provide services are cavemen who have no idea what it means to give good customer service. They play nice, they don’t solve the problems and then they delete the review, simple as that.
On the other hand, in Porto there are many social misfits of those who throw garbage on the ground, who do not pick up the excrement of their dogs and who, as drivers, do what they want.
The streets of Porto are a real circus.
Everyone parks on the sidewalk and in front of their front door regardless of whether they block traffic or not. I think they don’t even understand that they are doing something wrong.
In Porto, in theory, the Municipal Police is the one in charge of fining those who park badly. In May I started making claims in the Municipal Chamber of Porto and sending emails directly to the Municipal Police.
Although I sent dozens of photos and videos that would have been more than enough to issue a fine, it turns out that the Municipal Police can only fine if catch the wrongly parked car in person.
Supposedly they were monitoring the area and it was a lie because the car or van of the same guy was parked on the sidewalk in front of my house 24 hours a day.
At one point I called every time the guy parked there; They said that they were sending the patrol, and it was a lie, nobody ever passed by.
When you complain, they reply that “they don’t have the means.”
But then you go to the center of Porto, and it turns out that on the same corner there are 4 patrol cars and more than 8 Municipal Police officers chatting pleasantly.
In other words, outside the tourist center of Porto, the drivers do what they want and there is no authority to take charge.
One Sunday, the same moron who parks on the sidewalk had music blaring. I called the PSP at noon, and they showed up an hour later when the music was gone.
I called again at 9:00 p.m. because he had put the music back on and they showed up at 11:30 p.m. They even had the audacity to ring the bell and wake me up.
They took my information and told me “They had already spoken to him” and it was a lie, because when I called they only asked for my address. How had they talked to someone if they didn’t even know who they had to talk to?
That the same police lie is very serious.
So, if your neighbor plays loud music all day and you are not in the center of Porto, forget that there is someone to watch over your peace and rest.
Another sign of the disaster that is this city is that companies put advertising where they want. I already denounced before the Municipal Chamber a company that had a billboard placed on my street.
When my gate broke, I called them because I thought it was someone who lived there and had put the billboard on the wall of his house. The man did not even have the company in Porto and for something “so small” it was not convenient for him to come to Porto. Why was the billboard put on my street?
I have to say that here the Municipal Chamber did act quickly, because a few days later, they had already removed the sign.
The thing is that this company has the entire Porto district full of its posters without paying for advertising. How is it possible that no one has fined him?
In June I reported another billboard that I came across in the Valbom area (In the photo below you can also see that a car is parked on the sidewalk with total normality)
In addition to the chaotic traffic that Porto has at rush hour, many people drive like crazy and not to mention the motorists who do not respect anyone.
Motorists are a big problem that I did not expect to find in a “first world country”. It seems incredible, but there are a lot of gangs of retarded people who go around Porto with the loudest motorcycles. Seriously, it’s kind of pathetic, as well as extremely annoying.
Make yourselves the mental image of a group of short chubby guys dressed in black leather as if trying to be badass, crunching motorcycles through the streets of Porto. The noise of the blessed motorcycles is heard kilometers away.
The most serious thing is that those who go on a motorcycle do not respect or seem to know the traffic rules, so they pose a serious danger to the rest of the drivers. It has already happened to us several times that we have been about to have an accident because a guys on motorcycles cross wherever they want.
As I already told you in the previous post, there are things that I love, such as the kindness of most people and public health seems excellent to me. But then there are the things that I have just told you that make me realize that Porto, in many aspects, is pure Third Worldism, corruption and disorder.
Living in Portugal means significant savings in taxes, but the money saved does not compensate for the mental wear and anxiety in which I have lived. When Porto initially seemed very idyllic, after being scammed on multiple occasions, threatened, and intimidated several times for leaving a negative review and without any public body to defend me, I realized that this is not the country for me.
Although my house is still an upgrade in quality of life, what I have lived in Porto has helped me to decide that I will no longer invest money in this country (before we had planned to buy an apartment to rent) and to continue in the search for a good country to live.