Oh no!

Every now and again something happens that shows once more that France still hasn’t quite caught up with the age of the internet. My order from ULM Technologie arrived as expected today and when the Postie handed me the parcel I could see immediately that they’d cocked it up. Here’s product code 50133 that I ordered listed in their catalogue.

And here’s a snip from their invoice that I received by email.

So I’m expecting to see a package 4 metres long arrive today and of course, what came? A single piece of aluminium tube of length 1 metre. Very stupid. So someone at ULM Technologie applied a unit of ‘1’, quite correctly for the product, but apparently nobody thought that it might be a good idea to put ‘length 4 metres’ in the description field. So that’s my work on the Weedhopper held up now for at least another 3 days, because this being France, nobody will consider sending the order out for next day delivery as they made the cock-up.

And this is the country that says it will steal all of the City of London’s Euro business after Brexit and move it to Paris. I ask you.

Edit…

I’ve just come back to say that ULM Technologie is claiming that although its catalogue shows a tube length of 4 metres, the tube is sold in units of 1 metre even though it doesn’t say so and that you’re supposed to know that, presumably by a process of telepathy. And this is how the French concept of ‘client service’ is applied – when I ask to speak to a manager, I’m told that nobody is available until tomorrow morning at the very earliest.

So I’ve paid 28,50€ for a piddling 1 metre of 12 x 1 mm aluminium tube including delivery and I’ve just gone onto Ebay Germany (because I want to pay in Euros) and ordered two lengths each of 1.5 metres of the same dimensions from the UK for 13,00€, again including delivery. They have really lost the plot over here – and that’s the first and last order that ULM Technologie will be getting from me.