Beta Mum's Blog Beta Mum on 06 Apr 2007 09:08 am
French Time
At last, time has caught up with my watch, which has persistently remained on French summer time since August last year, resisting all my attempts to bring it back into line with Greenwich.
Now though, in France for Easter, it is again my friend.
Unlike Veolia.
We arrived at a freezing cold house after a night on the ferry, a fog-brained trip to the supermarket and an unscheduled stop on the N176 to reclaim a big box which had sprung loose from the roof rack and distributed long metal poles into the path of passing cars.
We were keen to drink tea, make supper and warm the children up with a bedtime bath. But when I turned on the water, nothing came out of the taps but a pathetic dribble.
We checked the mail that had arrived since our last visit, and there was an Avis de Fermeture, complaining we hadn’t paid our last bill, which, we then saw, had been sent to the wrong address, presumably due to my mangled French while on the phone to Veolia’s staff.
When I called the company to pay, I was told we couldn’t use a card over the phone, but had to drive to the nearest big town, half an hour away, to pay by cheque.
It seems peculiar to us that the French trust cheques, unaccompanied by cards, more readily than cards.
So we made the children some sandwiches, discovered that the house had been so cold that the Nutella had crystallised into unspreadable little chunks, stuck another story tape on and headed for St Malo, where we drove around looking for an obscure industrial estate so we could stand a chance of getting the water re-connected that day.
We found the office, thanks to un homme tres gentil who took a break from serving in his restaurant to look up the relevant street on the internet and print off directions. And there we experienced Veolia’s customer interface.
Good service is obviously not in the company mission statement.
I would imagine it goes more along the lines of –
- Ignore all the poor suckers who manage to locate the office. They’re obviously bad customers or they wouldn’t have to be there.
- Shrug your shoulders like a Parisian shop keeper who doesn’t stock anything bigger than a size ten
- Suck your lips in that peculiarly French way that leaves people in no doubt that they are being despised
- Stare at the computer with your nose scrunched up as if you’re watching a really gruesome episode of CSI
- Take the cheque while on no account looking at the person who’s proffering it
- Explain that the water cannot be re-connected before tomorrow, “pendant la journee”
- Show no compassion for the fact that customer has two young-ish children who will have to go to bed dirty
All this is obviously in French.
I did manage to communicate that we weren’t keen to pay the extra forty-five euros imposed as a forfeit for having our water turned off, as it had been an error in which they had played their part.
At least I won that battle.
So we left, bought some water at ten pence a bottle, probably straight from someone’s tap, and headed home for a spot of indoor camping.
The children were more than happy to go to bed dirty.
on 06 Apr 2007 at 7:38 pm 1.Penny in Amsterdam said …
I wondered who Veolia were:
http://www.veoliawater.com/
Obviously their site has a very different feel to your experience.
About the French trusting cheques, I was surprised. In The Netherlands paper cheques ceased to be accepted at least 5 years ago (though payment by PIN universal). Still such differences apparently in Europe within a few hundred km.
on 12 Apr 2007 at 9:26 am 2.cathy said …
Veolia’s website managers have obviously not communicated with staff in far flung regions of the company’s empire.
That is amazing re the cheque-v-cards thing. Shows how hard the MEP’s jobs must be, legislating for all those disparate countries.
Sorry to take so long to reply - am only logging on intermittently.
on 15 Apr 2007 at 11:08 am 3.Joseph said …
Well, water distribution used to be a publicly run service some years ago but your experience is just the consequence of privatisation.
It surprises me that you could avoid paying the 45€.
on 16 Apr 2007 at 9:56 pm 4.cathy said …
Must have been my winning way… or perhaps she was shocked by the cheek of a Johnny Foreigner asking for leniency in not particularly fluent French.