Monday, November 30, 2009

Not Leaping for Joy



We've finally hit the infamous French service wall.  The internet and phone in the apartment are on the same network and it went out two days ago, on Saturday.  The notice on the screen says to call a service number, but with no phone we couldn't do that.  The walls  in the apartment are so thick we can't use the cellphone indoors.  So we took the DartyBox router and our problem over to Darty.

The young lady there made it clear that it was in fact our problem, that a service call could be arranged in no other way, and shrugged with Gallic insouciance.  I responded with an American fit, pointing out (in reasonably good French, a part of my mind noticed at the time) that it was ridiculous to require a customer to use a non-operable phone to report a non-operable phone.  It did no good of course.

By the time we got home and hooked up the router, with all kinds of odd possible scenarios planned (e.g. one of us stands in the courtyard with the cellphone, yelling techical instructions to the other in the apartment) the computer and phone suddenly were on again.  I grabbed the phone, called the required number, got a really nice man who agreed to speak English (and did it well) and discovered that 64 DartyBoxes had gone out for the last two days and were now back on line.  Sorry about that.

So although our service experiences at BHV have been exemplary, they are apparently not the norm.  Darty could call them for lessons.  But their phones might not be working.

1 comment:

Karin B (Looking for Ballast) said...

Ohhhh, you got GOT!! Argh! I guess it has to happen sometime, huh. I am so sorry. But hey, on the bright side, this kind of makes you officially Parisian, huh! And your French was good enough to handle it! I am so jealous!

So yeah, that sucks, lol. But I love the way you wrote about it, I am glad you are back online, and all's well that ends well, eh? I hereby give you an invisible badge of honor that says you are truly Parisian now, by at least my definition. Good for you! :)