Frenchparents Blog: For Parents with an interest in the French Culture

How vicious can a company get with its customer in France seems to be the big game around here.

Internet access, cable TV and cell phone service providers seem to top the list, but banks are not bad either.

Take two cell phone providers I’ve tried so far (between 2004 and 2007).

One is Bouygues Telecom, the other is Neuf mobile.

Both (and all others to my knowledge) have the same great policy:

• When you’ re a prospective client, you can contact them for free,
• As soon as you indicate your wish to sign up, you’re charged for any attempt to contact them.

And I don’t mean peanuts, I mean phone numbers with a surcharge compared to a regular number! The rate these days is .34 Euros per minute, and the hold time is charged as well! Is that believable for my American reader? Probably not, yet its the trend here.

• I lost my cell phone after 3 years with Bouygues, and what do I get as a thank you? The option to get the lowest quality model for 30 euros with another year term contract, and to buy a new sim card at 25 euros!!

Can you imagine charging a current client 25 euros for a 1 euro component, when they have no cell phone and are prone to changing providers? Is that customer service or customer vice?

Of course changing is not so easy here because we are tied in to one year or two year contracts and owe whatever months are due on the contracts. But the feeling from clients is ” Hey, why so much hate?”

With Neuf Mobile I recently joined, it started earlier than with Bouygues. They indicate we should call a number with a .34 euros a minute charge or use their web site to register our phone once we receive it and get our number. I tried both, both automated systems told me I failed miserably in registering my phone. So I had to call the expensive customer service line again, wait to be put in touch with an operator, give my SIM card number yet again and wait, online, while Neuf kindly activated my phone. The rep did not seem one bit surprised by my call. What a vicious way to make a few extra dollars and lose all customer trust in the company at the same time…

As for Internet access providers, Club Internet, despite being considered better than others on customer service, regularly resets my connection without indicating this to me.

At the beginning I spent 45 minutes on the expensive customer help line to try and find the reason for the access failure - given they acted as if I was a retard and the connection had not worked already for months before quitting- and then I found out just reinstalling the software and restarting the ADSL modem got my connection up again. Isn’t that a pathetic, vicious attitude towards customers?

You have to live it to believe it, really…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 @ 10:30 am on the category French and Americans, my take on it. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.