A small niggle, but a niggle nevertheless

Here’s another case of what I regard as dishonesty.

Until we succeeded in prising a Livebox out of Orange.fr, despite them insisting for the last four years that it would not work for us (it does), we routed our telephone calls through Phonexpat. For the benefit of anybody who doesn’t already know, with a Livebox, as well as broadband Internet you get free phone calls to landlines in most parts of the world. Without the Livebox, your calls will by default route via France Telecom and you have to pay for them all. However, if you choose to have your calls routed via Phonexpat, they are considerably cheaper.

Having acquired and installed the precious Livebox, I contacted Phonexpat to say that as delighted as we had been with their service, it was no longer of benefit to us, and would they be kind enough to cancel it. A very quick and polite reply came back, saying that under the terms of their contract we had to give one month’s notice, which I duly did on 22nd May. Phonexpat confirmed that the contract would expire on 22nd June.

Yesterday – 25th June – our calls were still passing via Phonexpat, so I wrote to them to remind them that we had cancelled the contract. Ah yes, came the quick and courteous reply:

“The cancellation request was launched on the 22nd of June. It usually takes a few days to be cancelled.”

Now, why wasn’t the contract cancelled on the 22nd? Why was the cancellation request only launched (by Phonexpat) on the 22nd when they know that it takes a few days to be cancelled? Why don’t they launch the cancellation request in good time so that the cancellation comes into effect on the date when the contract expires?

It isn’t a huge issue – we’ve probably only make a handful of calls since 22nd, but it’s a shame, after giving us excellent service for several years, that this now leaves a slightly sour taste in my mouth, because it is another example of an organisation employing “small print” tactics to squeeze more money out of customers. Our calls are still routing via Phonexpat.

 

Gallimaufry

That’s what this post is, a jumbled, almost incoherent rambling, but the best I can do today.

Five days without telephone and Internet should have been stressful, but as they coincided with five days of constant socialising – every day we were either out dining with friends, or in entertaining friends, and on one day both, time passed quite swiftly and very pleasantly.

At Carole’s house, over a superb 5-course Italian meal, she mentioned this blog and how astonishingly interesting, fascinating, informed and well-written it is.  It really is, and you should check it out if you don’t already do so. Currently, the talk is about dragons, of the maternal kind.

Piglet in France graciously accepted the Versatile Blogger Award, and revealed that she is a two-times British Junior Ice-Dance Champion.

A kind couple came to trim our goats’ hooves, and invited us to visit their home and meet their miniature horses and cuddly python. While we were having coffee we noticed a wall covered with photographs, trophies and medals. Our hostess, we learned, was an Olympic-class archer who represented Great Britain.

Why is it that I am always astonished when people reveal extraordinary accomplishments?

Anybody who is interested in reptiles might want to check out the new link on my blog, Snake Buddies, for some very beautiful photographs of snakes and lots of information about them.  To celebrate Halloween, Snake Buddies features some seriously weird creatures

The morning when we took the car for its Contrôle Technique we were stopped on a roundabout by a group of picketers protesting at the proposed pension reform in France. It was bitterly cold, and they had a small fire going at the side of the road. One of them we knew, and he came to exchange “bisous“. His nose was quite frozen. The gendarmes stood by, thumping their hands against their sides to keep the blood moving. It was a good-humoured event; all the picketers asked was that drivers accepted a piece of paper outlining the reasons for the protest and the times and venues of future pickets. It was a rather poignant little scene, given the futility of it.

What else?

Oh, yes, there’s the pumpkin, all 25 golden pounds of it. Really, it’s so beautiful it seems sinful to destroy it, but why let it go to waste when there are still a few cracks and crevices to fill in the freezer? It’s going to die eventually, anyway.

Very encouraging feedback from the kind people who have read the manuscript that I have almost completed and which should be published in the early part of next year.

And finally, although the concept disgusts me, and I found this tale tragic, it did have a certain touch of comedy about it. It concerns an American impresario called Jeff Dickson, who promoted various sporting spectacles at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the indoor cycling track in Paris, and one of his ideas that did not go at all to plan:

The Lion Hunt

His most spectacular venture was his greatest and most expensive flop. Dickson discovered from the newspaper “Paris-Midi”, that the Schneider circus in Naples was auctioning 100 lions. Dickson bought the animals that same day, along with their cages and trailers, for 80,000 francs. He constructed a stage set and acquired two sick camels abandoned by a circus at Maisons-Alfort; he hired fire-eaters and employed 20 actors to dress as African explorers – all to stage a spectacle called The Lion Hunt.

The lions, however, arrived from Naples feeling tired and limp. Dickson assured reporters they needed only a meal and began importing dead animals from local abattoirs. Things didn’t improve. On the first night of the show, all 100 lions were released into the arena but showed no signs of excitement, still less ferocity. Dickson ordered his “explorers” to fire into the air to wake them up. The air became bitter with cordite fumes but the lions did little more than stroll about and urinate on the scenery.

Now convinced the animals were harmless, stagehands began beating them, at which children began to cry and parents shouted angry protests. The organizers withdrew the animals and moved to the next act of the show. Things went little better. The camels refused to walk in a line, as in a desert caravan. And their attendants, who were unemployed black people recruited from the streets, stumbled in the sand under their unaccustomed stage clothing. The show’s run was abandoned.

Dickson now had two camels and 100 lions that he no longer needed. An assistant tied the camels behind a car, led them to the Seine and abandoned them. There they were found by the police. Eventually Dickson rented the camels and lions to another circus for 10,000 francs a week, only for the circus to fail and Dickson to be summoned to collect his animals. By now he was also being pursued by the Société de Protection des Animaux for cruelty in abandoning the camels. The animals were finally sent to a zoo near Hamburg.

You can read all about the history of Vélodrome d’Hiver, including the shameful role it played during WWII, here.

Back

Thanks to a gentleman from France Telecom arriving with a cherry-picker and hacking off the branches of some trees interfering with the line into the hamlet, we are now back in contact with the outside world.