So here's my question for the day: what's so hard about getting a home phone, TV service, and internet set up? We've heard that it can take up to a month to get a phone line set up in France, so the relocation agency that's helping us initiated the process several weeks ago. We actually had an appointment for July 6, but SFR (the phone company we chose that's caused us nothing but grief) cancelled the appointment without giving us a reason. Now we have no idea how long we'll be waiting.
The only reason we have any internet at all is because Jennifer spent two horribly frustrating hours with the SFR people in Lyon getting a 3G internet key we can plug into our computers. (It only works on one computer, though it's supposed to work on all of them. And the speed of the connection is horrible--sort of like the old dial-up days.) Jennifer actually wrote a piece about her experience that she wants to put on my blog, but I haven't been able to get it posted because of technical difficulties. I'm still trying.
The girls are used to spending a lot of their free time with the TV and internet, so this isn't easy for them.
For the record, when we moved to Bethlehem, I called RCN (the local phone/internet provider), had a five minute conversation with them to order our service, and two days later they had installed our phone, internet, and cable TV. Why is it taking us endless frustrating hours of dealing with SFR employees and several weeks of time and we still don't have any service here? (It's not about the language barrier, because Jennifer had two French people from the relocation office trying to help her at SFR the other day.) We're in France, not Africa or Latin America, right?
Yes, we Americans are used to being connected to the internet immediately and with a fast connection. I don't know why it's so difficult in Europe. It took us a month to get our internet set up when we moved to Germany in 2003. Seems like they should have made some improvements since then.
ReplyDeleteHOWEVER, if you make a daily run to the local patisserie to buy French bread and chocolate croissants, you can remind yourself of the things France does MUCH better than the USA!!