Questions, questions

“So are things cheaper in France?” – it’s a question I’m often asked, on this occasion by Sylvia at Fox Garden machinery (our 20 year old Hayter mower – “by appointment to HM The Queen” - had broken and the combination of age and foreign make meant I had brought it back to the UK for service and repair).

Well, it all depends. My personal view is that, as a huge generalisation, the French like the sales process and they certainly like to think they’ve been sold a bargain. If the bargain lines up with what you want then yes, things can be cheaper in France. But otherwise there still seem to be big overheads in the process and, regrettably in many ways, it’s cheaper to return to the UK for many of our purchases.

“Can’t you get these in France?” asked the delivery driver who brought us the shower screens. He made a good point when I said that we could but the cost was higher and it seemed to me that distribution costs were a major part of the difference – “isn’t the price of Diesel much cheaper over there?”.

One item is that it’s almost always necessary to pay for in France is delivery, regardless of the size of the order or the distance travelled. The UK kitchen appliances arrived in the four hour window on the day we’d requested two months earlier (actually five minutes early) with, of course, free delivery.

Customer Service is valued in France but in a slightly skewed way to my way of thinking. I buy as little as possible from our local DIY place, Weldom. Not because it’s prices are too high (which they are) but because finding anything there is made so difficult by the staff. Not that they are unhelpful – quite the opposite – browsing is made nearly impossible by the continual requests “Have you found what you want?”; “Can I help you with anything?”; “Are you OK there sir?”. The shop must be overstaffed - there is usually only one checkout open and once I counted 11 floor assistants trying to help the dozen people in the shop.

On the plus side as I prepared to come back to the UK this week I had a call from Jacqueline at Mecadom who maintain and repair – Hayter excepted – all our garden machinery. The lawn tractor has a hard life cutting our 6000m2 and had lost all drive down the field, I’d asked for a service and urgent repair as the field was rapidly becoming a knee high savannah. “We had to replace the courroie”; “Ze Belt” she added when I looked puzzled. When I complimented her on her English she said she couldn’t speak it at all but ¾ of the manuals she had to order things from were in English so she knew the names of lots of parts. Despite the huge backlog of machinery in the workshop when I’d taken it in they’d turned it round in eight days, charged me less than the UK cost, not charged me for fitting the belt and found me a spare fuel tank cap for free (must have left ours on the field somewhere after the last refuel ….).

So, yes, there are things that are cheaper in France and customer service can be good but, often, you have to look hard.