I love my new apartment, which is like a little maison in Provence--instead of urban Paris--and I know I'm going to get my neighborhood's groove when I have the chance to dance out in it. So far, I've been kept steadily busy as the latest recipient of the France Telecom World Champion of Internet Service Screw-Ups. The incompetent utility has somehow rerouted my Internet service from my new apartment back to my old one--and then in a second foul up, canceled the Internet altogether at my new place.
How does this happen? Some un-well-meaning employee does it just for spite--or they can't fill out the form? In the numerous discussions I've had with the utility, I've been totally clear about what I wanted. They have repeated the order back to me. I hang up, and the order is mysteriously changed. Ergo, my Internet is still not working. I can't watch Apple TV and do other things I actually need to do! I'm sorry, but I'm addicted to movies. If I don't watch them, I have painful withdrawal. (The video above is by the Lumiere Brothers, who were some of the early filmmakers in France.)
A friend warned me of this. I told him that I'd made the phone/Internet change over the telephone a couple of weeks in advance and that the guy I talked to was delightful, and he pleasantly took care of me. I expected no problems.
What was I thinking? France Telecom is famous for such snafus. In a completely unfunny aside, there has been a spate of suicides at F-T. What is going on in the corporate culture to cause this?
My other big settling-in bugaboo is that IKEA still hasn't delivered the closet I bought three weeks ago. They were supposed to have called 10 days ago to set up a delivery and assembly date. The end of last week--a week late--they tried to call my iPhone, which has terrible reception in my lovely new apartment.
Do they call the fixed number when the call is dropped or not picked up? No. They just keep calling the phone that doesn't work. After trying them for days, I finally got someone at IKEA's delivery company on the phone this afternoon at 5:30. The woman who answered the phone told me that section was closed, and I'd have to call back at 9:00 A.M. You'd think IKEA, which is a Swedish company, would have a system that worked better. Is this the entire company's poor streamlining, or is it just the IKEA in France?
I know all the dreamers who want to live here are thinking, oh, I'd just like to have that problem. Once you arrive, there's no doubt your wish will come true.
Now for your and my amusement. Here's a photo of a refrigerator I didn't buy. For a beach house--or your 18th Century Paris apartment? What do you think?
Photo by Beth Arnold
---Beth Arnold in Paris
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