Since arriving to France I learned that the commercial companies, especially the communication / telecommunication companies are using a different language then the common people. But it could be me and my limited French.
The French is a complicated language. That fact was known to me since my high school days when I failed to master it, or maybe it was the fact my teacher kept throwing me out of class.
However I know that some words have similar meanings as the English and some were actually take from the language of the neighbors in the other side of the canal. Something really bad is happening to the language when it comes to commercial use.
My first purchase in France was a cellular phone, the Israeli one was far too expensive to use in France. I selected Orange as from some reason, just like in Israel, there seems to be completely no competition in the market and all the prices were exactly the same. Here i encountered the first paradox:
I selected the”Sans Engagement” program, and found that without engagement actually means catholic marriage.
First you buy the phone, full price, (don't be deceived, they buy them cheaper, and never suspect any cellular company for giving presents) that's fine after all the poor company have to live from something.
But… the phone is blocked and can be used only with Orange network and that means you are highly engaged to Orange with this phone you purchase and supposed to be yours to decide what to do with.
Then you buy the credit so you can use it. And you discover that the credit you bought is limited to a certain period of time. So the bastards actually force you either to use it or to loose it. Theoretically you can purchase 10 Euro credits, practically I could not find any store that sold less then 15 Euro. So they forced you to use their phone, decide what the minimum calls you will make and define the period of time you are allowed to do it. Well, I said to myself, at least I can receive calls, even here I was wrong as Orange wanted me to pay 50 Euro every 6 months to have this obvious simple, service open for me.
So as I said “Sans Engagement” sound to me more like a catholic marriage, and in order to break it I need th pope to unblock my phone (or the guy on Rue de la Republique), But any other company offer exactly the same service in the same price and the same type of engagement.
The second thing I needed is Internet, and telephony. Just like the cellular market the ISPs in France looks like a one big illegal cartel, the prices are the same. So I selected Free.fr, just to discover the second paradox Free=Very expensive.
Free provides me free telephony (limited to land lines only) a Selection of TV channels (I have more on my own website the Videowebgate.com) and fast Internet (Which is really fast after you reformatted your computer twice because their system is full of viruses).
Registering to Free is a long bureaucratic procedure that last 3 weeks and have 7 or 8 stages (in my country you get Internet connection in 1 or 2 hours), in the end of this process you get a huge package with 2 boxes, 6 antennas and plenty of wires. If you are a tech expert then it may take you several hours to set it up, but if you are a common person it will cost you 100 Euro to install it, and most people are not technical. Take a New computer with freshly formatted hard disk and plug it into the Free Box and immediately it catches 5-6 viruses (if you are very curious check drive c: root, and it gets there without even running any software). In the best case a technician will work on removing them 2 days, in the worst case kiss the data goodbye, some of these viruses are deadly. So now you spent fortune on fixing the computer, anti virus time, money and plenty of nerves.
Now the system works and running fast (this is the only promise that they really fulfill. A problem has occurred ! And you need the tech support. On the phone it will cost you 0.35 Euro a minute (about 20 Euro an hour) but because the tech support of Free is really bad and they have to ask each other to help this conversation will last at least an hour. Oh, yes I know, there is also a live support on line (which is useless in case the problem is with the connection itself). When my mail system was blocked by Free servers I tried this live support. I logged on and i was number 65, I waited patiently until my turn arrived and…. the chat room collapsed, I logged on again, waited again just to see the chat room crashes again when my turn arrived. So, I had to call the support and… to pay for it.
Its not such a big wonder that nobody knows where free offices are located, because someone may get extremely annoyed and burn the place down.
The conclusion is that free is actually an extremely expensive service…
So you tell me, is it me ? Or is it because I do not understand the language ?
