French Customer Service 101

At first glance, the following may seem like a bitter list of cranky complaints, most already expressed.  But in truth I present to you a detailed map of the do’s and don’ts for that rare bird in France: the foreign customer.  Remember that these rules are not absolute; they apply in some neighborhoods more than others (most notably useful for the ‘gay mecca’ known as the Marais, which I call home), and are not to be taken as a nationwide critique of how things are handled.  Although, it must be admitted that the following reminders are bleedingly obvious back home in the Sunny USA.  Consider: RULE:  The customer is not necessarily always right. This is a more general thought, encompassing a lot of the inevitable misunderstandings that arise all too frequently for Americans in Paris.  The way we approach customer/service situations back home is simple; the customer has the unspoken right to express him or herself ad nauseum, and be listened to, assuming all the while that the problem identified is a valid and pressing reason to complain.  The service representative, on the other hand, must submit to agreeing to all of the above, while in addition slapping a warm, understanding smile on his or her face!  Of course, this is not something adhered to religiously or otherwise, as one can always fall upon someone simply having a bad day.  But here in Paris if someone looks bored with their job, especially in a restaurant or popular store (like the FNAC), they’re probably miserable!  And therefore, proceed with caution.  Like most others, I have had countless unpleasant experiences in cafés and brasseries, but usually can guess beforehand what is about to befall me.  The worst was quite recent, where I asked for bread and was told by the wretched waiter that it wasn’t served with the particular dish I ordered.  Trop fort. RULE:  Make peace with the fact that here, you pay to have problems. People always talk about the ‘quality of life’ here in Paris, and how it is substantially higher than in the States as if it was some sort of quantifiable substance in the air.  When I decided to move to France, I heard this kind of observation time and again; things will be ‘better,’ you’ll eat cheese and drink wine, etc.  But the same phrase was always followed by a warning, or modifier; you gotta pay for it!  It’s true.  Taxes are sky high, every restaurant bill has a built-in tip…it’s clear that one pays extra.  But never did I think it would come to this.  The details are unnecessary, but suffice it to say that my boyfriend and I, through no fault of our own, had been without internet at our home since the middle of May.  The problem mushroomed until August.  Of course, at the onset of this dilemma, it was one of our top priorities to fix it.  I called the technical assistance line, and was confronted with an anomaly foreign to my American mind: “Vous serez facturé .34 centimes d’euro la minute.”  I in effect had to pay in order to communicate, and thereby hopefully resolve, my problem!  And did that first phone call help in fixing said problem?  Tu parles?!  Not even close.  And it didn’t stop there – we were automatically billed all along, fluidly and directly, for the web service which didn’t work.  So, while aware that I was paying two bills at once, I doggedly kept calling, kept getting the turnaround, and surely, kept paying.  And I might point out here that the telephone bill and web bill were actually from the same monstrous company (not to name any names).  I soon felt an uncomfortably strong resemblance to that more legendary shrimpy Jewish guy, the one with the slingshot. The snowball became so large and infuriating that we gave up for awhile – our priorities, after all, included other things, like eating and walking, and not ONLY kneeling under the bureau and drowning in wires and USB cables.  In the end, I owed more in phone calls to the damned service line than my monthly charge for the service I was trying to fix.  Never again! RULE:  It is unadvisable to approach anything angrily. Part of the reason that the above inconvenience eventually worked itself out is because parallel to it, I was learning from another Goliath-sized struggle, one with my bank.  For reasons unbeknownst to me, I had been charged a 59 euro ‘address search fee’, even though I had gone into my branch to ask if not updating this information would incur any problems.  The life of a foreigner here rarely involves a permanent address, especially one where you have the twelve bills with your name on it that institutions such as banks require from you in order to believe you actually exist.  During the same period I was called on two separate occasions (on Saturday morning I might add) by the same branch with someone giving me a tired sales pitch.  Needless to say, I was irked.  I called the centre téléphonique, and spoke to a very nice lady who explained that I needed to update my address asap, and that if I contested the fee, it would most certainly be reversed.  At no point did she bother to mention that a few days following, my account would be frozen and my card cut in two!  Sure enough, that’s what happened, and my irksome feelings deteriorated to something worse.  In another game of pay-telephone merry-go-round, I managed to procure the number of my branch manager, and I must say I let him have it.  You see, I was under the impression that I was right, and Rule #1 hadn’t quite sunken in yet.  I didn’t get my money back for months, and finally had to go at it in a rather roundabout way so as to avoid the guy I had mouthed off to.  Since…