Le Franco Phoney

Shops here in the French Alps keep strange hours. For example, the supermarket in La Clusaz is closed from 12.30pm to 4.30pm, and rumour has it that the reason for this is so that tourists have to buy their lunch from the bakeries and restaurants and thus spend more money in town. In fact, most of La Clusaz closes for the inter-season months of May, October and November. And as I’ve written about in the past, convenience stores are more like inconvenience stores, while “fermeture exceptionelle” (unexpected closure) is a sign well used here in France, and one I’ve struck when attempting to go to a Chinese restaurant in Annecy, the post office in Bonneville and of course, the government office in Annecy for car registration. When I made it to the post office in St Jean de Sixt before it closed for the weekend at midday on a Saturday, I was then told that my item wouldn’t leave until Monday because nobody picks up the mail on the weekends. Shop keepers apparently have a comfortable life and they don’t need to open as often as I’d like them to.

So why am I still surprised to see this sign? Pictured here is a sign for a shop in Annecy called “Espace Déco” (a home decorations shop). The sign then reads:

Opening hours

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 12.30pm - 2.00pm

Monday, Wednesday, Saturday: by appointment or call (number blurred out by me)

So, that’s a total of four and a half hours per week for customers to just happen to walk past while the shop is open. Does anyone ever really bother to call a number just to touch an item for sale and discover its price? I’d feel kind of obliged to buy it if I hauled the shopkeeper out of bed or wherever just so I could browse a few serving trays. How are these shops still in business? The only reason I can think of is that people must think it’s more exclusive if the shop stays closed most of the time and then they make the effort to come back. I think I’ve found the most exclusive shop in the Alps.

Long-term readers may remember the postcard I blogged about which was addressed to my friend with the wrong address, the wrong post code, the correct village and the wrong surname. More recently, there was the realisation that mail does not get into a letterbox unless it has the recipient’s name on it. And last weekend, I discovered that in France, oversized envelopes, bubble wrap, padded envelopes and basic brown paper are not available at the post office or the typical outlets you’d expect. That sounds ridiculous, right? Well, they’re kind of avaialble, but not really. Let me explain.

I know some post offices around the world (like in England, for example) demand that you buy your padded envelope — from the large selection — from the separate retail purchases counter. You can then take your envelope home to pack, dance with it, do what you like with it, or you can add some goodies to it right there in the post office, then head to the official postal service counter and pay for postage. Other countries (like Australia) provide post offices where you can buy packaging to suit your needs at the same counter, then quickly bundle up your items while chatting to the staff if there’s no queue.

France, however, doesn’t seem to stock packaging products at any of the places you’d expect. I needed to send two parcels last weekend. At 10 in the morning, I tried the post office, but the only packaging there were postage-pre-paid boxes and tough-bags and one pre-paid padded envelope, and all these options were expensive because the postage (to Europe only) was already included. Why on earth would I pay €30+ for an envelope which I then have to pay for postage to Australia on top of that?

So, I left the crowded post office and hit the supermarket. There were some standard A4 envelopes, but no padded envelopes and no rolls of brown paper. I then tried two news agents, but they didn’t even have a standard letter envelope for sale! Where do people go to buy padded envelopes here? I need to know.

With the pressure of the post office closing at midday, I desperately needed to get these gifts sent so they would arrive before Christmas and a birthday. Finally, at another supermarket, I found two metres of brown paper covered in cartoon santas and other festive images. No worries: inside out and it became normal brown paper. I used the whole lot. A friend has since told me about a shop which may stock padded envelopes. If they do stock them, I’m going to buy up big and consider opening a stand outside the post office.

UPDATE: I wrote this entry before I went shopping this morning. By this afternoon, I had discovered that rolls of brown paper can be found at Ikea in Switzerland, and supermarkets in Annecy stock very small padded envelopes. I guess the local supermarkets here stock containers of grass for cats and stuff instead. Yes, I bought a container of grass for my cat.

It doesn't matter how fancy it is, make sure your name is on it

Okay, I promise this is the last thing I write about moving house, but it might be valuable to someone out there. In France, or at least in this region, you absolutely must must MUST write your name on your letterbox. When I first moved to France, I thought it was a quaint remnant of the past to let the postie know who you are, if they didn’t already guess from the names on your mail. I was so, so wrong.

If you do not put your name on your letterbox, even if you’ve gone into the post office and filled out the change of address forms and introduced yourself to your new postal staff, you will not receive any mail. Nothing. Nada. Rien. Game over.

I didn’t know this two weeks ago, so when I put my name on the letterbox three days after moving in, the postie then informed me that she had seen mail from the electricity company and the phone company and something else that looked personal. Did she not see the moving boxes stacked inside the door? Had she not seen cars full of boxes being lugged inside just days earlier? Was she not aware that she hadn’t delivered mail to this particular house for more than a year, and that it had a new name anyway (there are no street names or numbers where I live: just house names)? Did she not put two and two together when she saw bills from utility companies arrive that would indicate services being activated for the new people who have just moved in? Did she not? No, she bloody didn’t.

So, quite possibly, there’s now a housewarming card winging its way back to the person who sent it to me, along with some black mark against my name on some utility company database. Let this be a lesson to anyone moving to France: write your name on that letterbox as soon as you possibly can!

Let’s start with the dumb. This letter from EDF arrived in a letterbox in Annecy last week. You can see from the date circled at the top (click on the letter for a larger image) that the letter was printed a month earlier. This seems to be standard practice with utility letters: it’s as if companies print out a huge pile of letters, then get someone to stuff one per day or something. Anyway, three weeks after the date, the letter arrived.

Now, three weeks seems like quite a long time when there’s only fifty-two of them in a year. But check out the other circled date. Yes, that’s December 2007 — almost a year ago. What’s the significance? Well, this is the date that the recipient requested a new service. This letter confirms the request, but then requests that the recipient call the number again to confirm once more — more than ten months after the request was made!

I know this is France and paperwork is relaxed, but tenants have come and gone in less time. And what makes the letter even more unbelievable is that it urges the reader to speed up the process two times. Great, so if your new service still isn’t working almost a year later, call this number and maybe you’ll get it after a further six months because you get to talk to the person who stuffs one letter per day between taking calls on missing letters and delayed services. Just so you know, the service still remains unused by the recipient.

On the other hand, the French postal system comes up trumps. What it lacks in speed it makes up for in service. A friend of mine received this postcard. As you can see, I haven’t had to blur out the address: it was simply addressed to my friend, with her surname spelt incorrectly, in La Clusaz. The postcode is wrong (that’s the sender’s postcode in Thônes, down the road), and no effort was made to describe the address. In the whole of La Clusaz, the post office tracked down the right person, with nothing more than her first name to go by, and delivered the postcard.

This certainly counteracts their placement of a large parcel for me in my letterbox. They wedged it in from the side that their key works in, but on my smaller, framed side, I had no way of getting the parcel out. For almost a week, it was wedged in despite the explanatory note on the letterbox. Each day, I’d fish out the new letters from around the wedged box until finally the postie saw the note and knocked on my door with parcel in hand, apologies and an embarrassed smile.

But these things are not so rare. As I type, I have a router ready to be installed, but the letter with my login details has never arrived. An insurance company who demanded I pay my renewal even though I had followed all legal routes to cancel my insurance still send letters telling me that, as a member, I can vote for their board members or something. I did quite like my water bill for 48c (if only they were all like that!), and I’m still waiting for an electrician to arrive, who promised in a letter to be here in October. We’re all, of course, only human, and French utility services certainly show their human side.