Like a trainwreck in slow-motion

Hello, all

So our move to a new apartment happened – like a train wreck in slow motion. Actually it was a little better than that I suppose. It was like a train wreck in slow motion only as all self-managed moves are like train wrecks in slow motion. (And I STILL can't believe my old Toyota got hit by a train before I ever bought it!) I did it the wrong way – moved in bits and pieces rather than wholesale. I’d like to think it created less work for other people and more work for me, but actually I’m not so sure. We certainly did get a lot of good help from people.

The endgame was particularly stressful because I we had lots to do to get the old apartment ready for the new tenant, who was renting a room at the hotel in the last days and wanted urgently to move in. We basically had a week once we knew the schedule. That last week I also had on-call owl shift, which requires internet in order to diagnose and fix problems. So while K made the "jump" on Wednesday the 15th, I made the jump two days later and slept on the couch the last two nights at the old apartment. A couple videos:





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Now of course the new place looks like a mess that is slowly unfurling into some semblance of order. We're finding out that we bought furniture from the Land'O'Giants - certainly not French natives. The recliner you could drown in. Neither K's nor my feet touch the floor when you sit in it. The TV stand is larger than some bar-room dance floors I've seen. We could have the London Philharmonic over. On top sits the dinkiest little TV that once you turn on turns itself off again after five seconds. Guess that's what you get for free... Meanwhile B's new dresser looks like a white-washed Gotham City Hall; and because we bought stuff second hand the color scheme is every bit as much a train wreck - except in our bedroom, which has the most surprising combination of steel gray and coral - and it works. You gotta see it to believe it.




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The utilities also mostly came together in the most surprisingly efficient way. Electricity and water never got shut off, so no problem. Gas heat, well we didn't have that for a day. The shower was tepid, but that's okay in the summer heat. France Telecom (FT) came through the most surprisingly. Because I had the name of the previous tenant they were able to look up the old phone number and then set up my phone activation in three days. This is very surprising, given the horror stories I heard about FT. If customer service is famously lacking in France, then FT is the dark nadir of arrogant condescension and stubborn Frankish monopolistic pig-headedness by most accounts. Yet in this case they did very well, and it was their competitors in the internet business surprisingly that exhibited the famous French bureaucratic mindset.

My internet account the last year-and-a-half has been with Free.fr. A lot cheaper than FT's "Orange". And except for some initial difficulty in setting up they gave me more or less reliable service. I fully expected to be able to transfer the account quickly and easily.

Free: Not so fast! You can't do that, Mr. K: the new account is not in your name; changes of address cannot include a change of name.

Me: My name is not Mr. K, he's my landlord, and it's the OLD account that's not in my name. And you made me do that because he owned the phone line, I didn't want it that way. It was always my bank account that paid for the services.

Free: Doesn't matter. The "demenagement" department (handling moves and changes of address) can't do this, you have to call "facturation" (billing) to close the old account and open the new one.

Me: Okay...(call the facturation department)

Facturation: Sorry, that's not our bailiwick, Mr. K. Since you're moving you have to talk to demenagement.

Me: But they told me to call you! I already talked to them.

Facturation: Sorry, you'll have to call them again, since you're moving.

Demenagement: (garbled French - not only do they refuse to speak English - which I will grant them - but they also refuse to slow down and speak clearly even though you ask them. If you do, they hang up on you. I gave up and asked friends who speak better French to call on our behalf - they got the same story, and then gave up since they had work to do.)

Finally I figured out that "chatting" over the internet works much better - not as fast as telephone conversation, no ambiguity in what the words are - and you can use google to translate the conversation on the fly!

To boil it down: Finally someone in facturation agreed that I had to close the old account.

Facturation: Just log in to your account and download the form - see because you can't close an account over the phone, you have to mail it in.

Me: Yeah, but I can't log in to my account; for some reason it says the phone line is under construction even though I've had this account for over 17 months.

Technical assistance: Oh, yes. The phone lines are being upgraded in your area so you can 'unbundle' Free internet and phone service from a France Telecom line. That's why you can't access your internet account.

Me: So you're saying that in order to get internet in my new place I have to close the account at the old place, and in order to do that I have to download a form that I can't access right now, because the phone lines are being upgraded??? (I'm thinking: "does this make ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER???")

Technical assistance: That's right!

Me: So how long is this going to take? Days? Weeks? Months? I'll be paying for an account that I can't use all this time, and have no internet where I'm living.

Technical assistance: I can't give you a date, sir, but I can assure you that your concerns will be taken into consideration.

Facturation: ...and not only that, but there's a termination fee that you have to pay to close the account.

How utterly ridiculous, How insane! I've never experienced such unmitigated hostility directed by a company to its own customers in all my life! Not even from American cell phone companies, and I think all you Americans will agree, that's saying something. At least in America when you threaten to leave they fall over themselves to keep you around. Here they couldn't care less. I would walk around with my jaw dragging on the floor for hours afterwards, stunned in disbelief at what I had heard.

Are all y'all still absolutely sure that you want a single-payer health-care system in the States??

And I was about to leave too, but at the same time I had abortively started to sign up for a new account with Free, and a new subscriber person somehow got a hold of me and said "Anything can be done." This guy must not be a French native, his name is Youssef - or else he's the exception that proves the rule. He found out that the upgrade work was actually finished, and I may yet be able to get out from paying FT for a phone line, and pay only 30e/month for the whole shebang. We finalized the deal today, and he says in a week we'll be linked up. Just don't tell the facturation department, they still think I'm paying a termination fee. Still, better not count this chicken till it's hatched...chances are this story ain't over yet.

Meanwhile, the gas oven got hooked up:

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Did I mention before we moved that workers suddenly appeared outside our window? Some of you may remember this is exactly what happened to us when we moved out of CSCC housing back near the University campus. Now we've learned that when workers start lurking outside your window, time to start packing...

Take care,
-PKBGD