Don’t call us…

Just give me a few more weeks and I’ll have fallen out with and possibly strangled every telephone sales person in the Cote D’ Azur.
I have to state categorically at the outset, that I usually can get along with most people, indeed I’ve lectured in anger management and resolving conflict, but… believe me all my counselling and therapy training has not prepared me to deal (calmly) with French bureaucracy.

Having just moved house, I foolishly assumed that it would be a simple process to transfer my existing telephone and wifi account from one address to another. After all, the new apartment has a telephone line installed and the previous tenant used the same provider. How fortunate. Or not.

Six weeks later, dear reader, I am still stumbling around in the communication wilderness. My friends assume I’ve adopted the Victoria Beckam lifestyle of the rich and famous and am now too busy and too precious to contact them, or more likely, they’ll think that I haven’t paid my telephone bill and have been cut off in my prime, or even more likely that given my IT skills which are equivalent to that of a cushion, have finally rendered me helpless.

Please tick none of the above.

And so the sorry saga continues, my long suffering estate agent has given up calling given up the ‘phone company on my behalf, he gave an Oscar winning performance after his last attempt. He strode around his office huffing and puffing like a prima donna shouting C’est ne’st pas possible!

Yes, it is and if he can’t sort it out, how can I with my schoolgirl French and phobia of telephone answering machines?

I even roped my best French friend in whilst visiting her 500 miles away to plead my case to said telephone company and to try and make some sense of the delay. Her French was certainly up to the challenge, her patience wasn’t and some poor unsuspecting telesales operator in some far flung village in India had the ‘phone slammed down on him, so frustrated was she by their endless excuses.

None of which helps me. So, at the four week mark, bloody but unbowed, I decided that the only way to tackle this was to pluck up the courage and face the sales person in French, in France. In theory, it was a cunning plan. In practise, it failed dismally. When, in my best French, I explained I had no telephone and that my neufbox was deprived of a line, I was told to phone this number. Hello! I’d just explained I’d pas de telephone. But as he was holding a phone in one hand and typing merrily on his pc with the other, maybe he could make the call for me. After all it was a telephone shop, or was I missing something? Obviously I was, as it was more than his job was worth. C’est n’est pas possible! (he obviously had met my estate agent). He helpfully suggested I use the callbox along the street. I helpfully suggested where he could stick his suggestion, and believe me the sun does not shine there!



Please await the next instalment in this sorry saga, I have now been in the property over six months and I’d like to say all is well and has been resolved with the telephone company comprising of three initials and no colour. But… I’d be lying….