This is a rant. A while ago, I decided that France should just face up to the fact that it couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery and outsource. Everything – the public sector, the private sector, government administration – all of it should be outsourced to either the Dutch, the Germans or the Japanese. They at least certainly know how to do things efficiently.
Well, my feelings on the matter have been very much strengthened today. Strike one for La France came when I contacted the Dordogne Prefecture to see how my application to become an “auto-entrepreneur” was going. You have to use a tedious online enquiry form to reach them as they don’t give out their email address. So anyway, I applied in mid-March and should have heard by now. The application was theoretically very swift – just fill out this online form and send us a scan of some ID. The form is one of the worst examples of its kind I think I’ve ever had the misfortune to fill out, but I got through it in the end. I received a confirmation email, then later that day another email, asking me to change one of the fields on the form and resubmit it. I did this and received email confirmation it was once again being processed.
So, I was a little miffed when the response to my enquiry basically said “we have no idea who you are and we have no record of ever getting an application from you. If you would like to become an auto-entrepreneur, please fill out this short from online”. No titting way was I going through that again. I emailed back the customer services rep to give the date I applied, as well as saved copies of the emails they had sent me, and basically said umm, no, sorry – you have had my application: please try again. The email bounced back, reminding me I had to use their silly form. It allowed me to attach documents, but only in jpg format (why?!) so I saved screen shots of the emails, attached those and sent it off.
I have yet to hear back from them, but that’s ok, because in the interim, Orange leapt in with Strike Two to keep me good and fired up. We blogged recently about gaining our freedom from the lying scumbags at Darty (our ISP) – well, since then we have been trying to switch to Orange. Again, this is why France shouldn’t bother trying to run any form of business -when someone is trying to give you money, don’t make it difficult for *&^%’s sake. We applied on 23 March, coming via a third-party company with whom Orange has some sort of partnership. It’s an independent company and can hook you up with any of the providers out here, not just Orange. Anyway, it was all done in one 10 minute phone call – nothing else to do but sit and wait for the new box to arrive, which it was supposed to do within 15 days. We even got an email confirmation telling us what our new Orange phone number was going to be. On day 14, I was getting nervous about the total silence and lack of box, so I rang them and was told all was in hand.
It has now been 22 days, so I called them again. The lady was baffled as her computer said everything was fine with my account and couldn’t understand why I didn’t have my box. She gave me a number to reach Orange directly, as well as my client number. I was on hold just under 10 minutes, getting less and less impressed. Through at last, I was told I have the wrong area for internet issues. Another number, another 10 minutes of holding. The man who eventually answered had absolutely no record of me at all, either as a current Darty user in the area, or as someone awaiting activation of an Orange account. Eventually, he gave up and said we’d have to start all over again. So, he took all of my details again, assigned us with yet another new number and arranged for the box to be sent immediately to Thiviers for collection next Tuesday. In fairness to the guy, he insisted on sending someone out for the installation, free of charge, and also offered me a better monthly tariff than the one we were originally going with, so assuming it all actually happens, all will be well. In the meantime, I am managing expectations accordingly.