Only in France

I picked up the internal doors for my house today from Leroy Merlin. They have an excellent system. You arrange a time for the pickup and they have the goods ready to be brought to your vehicle. It worked perfectly the other day when I picked up the laminate for my bedroom floors.

When I arrived at the barrier at the entrance into the pickup area this morning I pressed the button and gave my name and order number and went to bay 2 as requested. Within moments a young lady arrived with my doors on a trolley and even helped me to load them into the van I’d hired.

I then drove off – but I could have been anyone taking them away really, because nobody had asked me for any form of proof of ID! So, a great system but…

Now the story about my hire van. I’d arranged just a short hire from Leclerc who I’d hired the van from for a few days when I moved out of my old house. Best price around and van in excellent condition. I only wanted the van for a couple of hours and arrived some time before my pick up time of 10.00 am in order to get all of the formalities sorted out.

Only one problem. They use a telephone dial-up card system and I swear that it took around ten minutes for it to complete the transaction after the button had been pressed. The young guy had asked me when I’d be back and I said that it’d be around midday. He then said that to make it easy for me, he’d put a return time of 2.30 pm on the paperwork.

By the time we’d completed the paperwork after the card machine delay and the agent had scraped off the windscreen for me so I could see out (didn’t think about doing it before I arrived…) it was around 10.30 am before I got away. So it was actually just after midday, about 12.10 pm when I got back, and to my surprise the office was shut up and barred – literally.

But I could see a young lady inside and tapped on the window. She told me that her colleague was not there and the office was shut. She than asked for my paperwork and on seeing the return time, that I had not asked for mind, of 2.30 pm, she said that I needed to come back then. And that was it! Her colleague hadn’t told me that the office would actually be shut until that time…

So I had no choice but to go off, grab a sandwich and a drink for lunch and sit in my car in the parking for something over two hours, suspecting all the while that the time of 2.30 pm that the original guy had put on my paperwork was not to help me at all, really, but was to help them…

But wait, it gets worse! When I returned to the now open window at just after 2.30 pm I was greeted by yet another gloomy face who told me that their computer wasn’t working and they could neither rent nor return vans at that time. He said that I’d have to hang onto the van until the system was working again (I’d actually parked it up in a return bay) but had no idea when that would be.

I went back at around 3.00 pm (having brought the van back just after midday remember) and was told that the system still wasn’t working. I suggested that maybe it might be a good idea to save time if he came out to inspect the vehicle to confirm that it was in the same condition as when I took it and take the kilometrage reading, and this he did.

When he got back about five minutes later there was a small group gathered around a boffin who was anxiously trying to reboot the computer system. He more or less managed to get it up and running and I was able to pay the additional fee for the distance driven. They then asked me if I’d like to wait a few more minutes for an invoice to be printed.

As what remains of my life flashed before my eyes I declined and fled the scene as quickly as possible. I think that they still haven’t really got the hang of using these damn computer systems here in France. That may or may not be so, but in a way it’s part of the charm of the place 🙂