It does not seem possible that September came then went and here we are the 1st of October in a heat wave wondering as to what is going on. This week Mike and I have been in stressful mode as the culmination of the past 3 weeks has kicked in. We took our lap top to Leclerc to have a pirated software problem sorted on the 13th September and now we have a returned a laptop with two years of work wiped off the hard drive and Mike is trying to piece it all together as I write.. On Monday this week I called the director of Leclerc to say we would be in at nine thirty to pick up our laptop and deal with the problem ourselves rather than pay them to do the job, but he turned on me and said that he would not release the laptop unless I wrote a statement in French as to why we had taken it to them in the first place. I argued in my very bestest French that I was not going to be part of a witch hunt against the sales assistant we dealt with in 2009, and besides a statement like that would need to be in English and translated in order to ensure we were not mis-understood. The Director said “no statement no laptop and by the way Monsieur Baker was not to come or he would call the gendarme”. I was so upset and worried about what we had got ourselves into, so whilst repeating the simple chant…I am the customer… we went to the police station to ask what right Leclerc had to hold our laptop to ransom, but they turned on us as well and said that the director had already called to say we would be in store at eleven that morning and that we were unreasonable and abusive people. I grabbed Mike and we slipped out of the police station as they had most definitely taken the Leclerc position and I felt like a player in a twist of fate movie where I knew I was innocent but the world was against me.
Long and the short was that we wrote a response to the letter saying that we wanted the laptop returned in the same state as when we left it and we would be in store on Thursday. We duly plucked up the courage to face yet another episode with the nasty director but this time he backed himself up with the accountant for the branch. We all four sat in the office and when I asked if we could please have our computer back they said no not until I write a statement in French and then I just went to jelly and cried and sobbed to the point that Mike tried to drag me out, he must have felt like a complete idiot with a blubbering interpreter wife who couldn’t now even put two words together. I stood my ground and angrily said that I was going nowhere until I had the lap top back . The accountant was a much more people person and when I explained what had happened and after the director had tried to rip me off a strip or two in front of him he asked the director to back off and listened to what I had to say and volunteered to write the statement on our behalf making sure we did not incriminate our selves or anyone else. He then read it to both Mike and I before handing over the laptop. It was at this point that I realised that the request for money to change the software was not a quote but an invoice and all the work and downloads and files and pictures Mike had stored away over the past two years were gone. Both Leclerc men were astonished at our looks of astonishment and all I wanted to do to punch their lights out because we had not given them permission to take the hard drive to pieces in order to cover up their mistake of installing pirated Windows Seven in 2009. So I realised we had no leg to stand on, I looked them both in the eye and mine were very red and blood shot and I swore to god that I would never set foot in their store again and I promised to tell a thousand people about this pathetic attempt at customer services.
Today however, we shopped in Carrefour, I was dragging my heals, feeling like I had cut my nose off to spite my face and that I would hate having Carrefour as my main shop and as we went round we both realised that we had been missing out and this was actually an OK store. They gave me 4 € off my butchers bill and put 4.05€ on the fidelity card and we both came out feeling elated and up beat……is living in France turning us into a pair of weirdo’s….well, yes I think so.
I was sent a book recently called French or Foe by Polly Platt. Chapter 5 is called Misery in the Big Store, your weapons and how to handle them.
ReplyDeleteChapter6 Blame Paranoia.Then there is a quote by Odile Challe Professor of Organizational Behavior from Paris university, On n'pas droit a l'erreur en France. The chapter actually sites experinces like yours.You must borrow it .