Less and Less Service in the Land of No Service
In the months that have intervened since I wrote about the horrors of getting ADSL in France, the stories just keep coming.
M., a Brit expat lost all his phone service for 4 months when he signed up (on my advice…shudder) to Free, the second largest broadband provider in France. For the first few weeks he kept calling Free who said it was the fault of France Telecom, then calling France Telecom who explained that it was most certainly the fault of Free. These infructuous ’support’ calls cost 96€.
After a few weeks of such merde de taureau, one learns to live without a telephone because the alternatives are all serious felonies, even here in France. Rest of story: several months later, M. happened to walk by a France Telecom sales office, which are generally located in lovely historic districts of midieval cities, right next to the MacDonalds. He thought, ‘What the hell’, walked in, exposed his tale of woe to a friendly salepersonne, who called up a webpage, grumbled ‘hmmm’, clicked a box, and then said to my friend, ‘Hmmm. Go home, see if your line works now’. And it did.
Another M. American this time, had her Freebox (Free’s ADSL modem that is supplied Free with each subscription), burn out during a lightening storm. A 3€ call to Free’s hotline helped determine that the modem was indeed fried and that Free would send out a replacement right away, but it would cost 190€. Rather shameful considering that Freeboxes can be bought at any openmarket in Taiwan for about 6¢/piece, but hey, that’s global capitalism for you. M. said ‘Send it on’. She also called me.
I went by a few days later with a spare Netgear modem that we have for cases such as these, tried it on M.’s line and it worked (I am skipping a few steps here for brevity). I suggested that she would be better off keeping the Netgear and that she tell Free to shove it. It was already 10 days since Free had promised a Freebox right away.
The subsequent multi-€ call to Free support revealed one of the least surprising surprises that can occur in daily french life: Free hadn’t any record of an ADSL modem for M. If I hadn’t showed up with the Netgear, M. would still be waiting. To their credit, the first Free support personne put M. on hold while he ‘did research’. After about 4€ of phone time he came back online, confirming that no one anywhere in their support centers in India, Morocco, Poland, or Paris had a trace of a request for a new modem. Then asked rather politely, “Is there anythng else I can do for you today?”
If customer service in France only sucked in the ADSL sector, it would be petty to criticize such an old venerable culture with great health care and really inexpensive wine. After all, we all choose to come here as a lifestyle choice (except me, I was kidnapped and woke up in a vineyard at dawn in December), so we have to assume the consequences.
But there’s more to the story of customer service. Stay tuned.
Technorati Tags: ADSL, customer service in France
