I hope you had a happy and peaceful weekend in Easter. Our Easter was rainy, so it was’Pâque Aux Tisons‘(Easter for fire). I am starting to make Demob happy, since I have resorted permission to completely emerge from the restrictions subsequent to view in a week. Meanwhile, everyday life does not disappear.
Everything you hear about the Byzantine complexity of the French bureaucracy is true. Duration of our 28 years here, the Internet has developed. In theory, this should facilitate things. It does, in the sense that you can now perform many tasks remotely and load documents without having to visit the office in question. However, if it is somehow an exception, the Internet has worsened things.
I recently wrote about the mandatory exercise of all French. common To modify the postal address system so that each road has a name and each house a number. This aims to facilitate emergency services, mails, etc. They will find places, especially those isolated.
Theory versus practice
Recently, our Mairie sent us a letter that our house is now the number XXX, Chemin of XXXX. The number is the distance from the beginning of our lane. La Mairie locked a certificate That we must use our address with public services, etc.
All good and good. At least, that is, until you try to do it in practice. Somehow, I knew this was going to be more complicated than a simple tick box exercise. Until now, you have tasks, if not days, or our time. To be fair, it is likely to be so frustrating for public service employees who have to implement tontal and inflexible rules.
The letter said we could go to the Service-Public website, where all public services would report if we upload our certificate. This worked for approximately half of those we use. The rest, for some reason, were exceptions, and we had to notify them separately. This is where fun and games began. Here are two examples.
Striking sparks with EDF
I received an email from EDF (Electricité de France), saying that I had to call your customer service line to change my address. After enduring for seven minutes, turning what repetitive information alternated with irritating music, an operator said: “You should do it online.”
“But Edf sent me an email to which he told me on the phone.”
For the person’s credit, she spoke to me through the online version. First, I would not accept the new address. Then she took me to the bowels of the website, the equivalent of some dusty corridor that the public never enters. Finally, among us we succeed.
Lose the will to live with the post
The sausage was the Postale Banque. This sacred institution stops somewhere in 19Th Century.
My husband’s experience was Kafka style. He had to go to our village post office, about 6 km away, to solve his online account and change the address. This meant completing an extensive way to ask all kinds or irrelevant questions. He forgot to take any identification with him (yes, he should have known it better), so he had to go home for it.
At the end of this, while the elongated tail was shuffled and muttered behind him, he was tolerant, he had to return in three days to collect his authorization code. And the outcome? When he reviewed his online account, the new address had been wrong.
Equal frustration
My experience with the same bank was different but equally frustrating. Your website told me to send a safe message requesting the change of address. A day later, a return message informed me that I needed to update my personal data. Once this is done, I should send my request again for the change of address. In addition, I would confirm whether I have my residence or rent and if I have a mortar.
Aviously, I consulted my personal information. I noticed that they had my nationality as French, which I am not and I have never claimed to be. Change this (that is, another person’s error) requires downloading a form, completing, scanning and loading it and providing support documents. All this simply to add a line to our address.
To answer the question the title of the publication raised, they have not taken me, but it can be just a matter of time.
Porto lived in any other country for almost three decades, and it is very possible that you tell me it is fair as Bath, or worse, where you live. In that case, you have my sympathy.
We accept this as the price we pay for the lifestyle we have chosen. May I know, there is no perfect place on the planet, and the advantages of living here still exceed tiny. To remind me that there is more in life than The paperrasse (Excessive paperwork), here are some spring flowers.
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