Nifty
Member
Posts: 4,964
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Post by Nifty on Jun 21, 2022 14:47:40 GMT 1
It will be a long haul back to normality, I won't return to my banque addresse till les grandes vacances scholaires, I think the 8th of July, I will be driving all day so the banque probably wont be open until Tuesday at which point they will deny all knowledge of the card before eventually finding it in a cardboard box that anyone walking in could access. For the UK cards it wont be till completion on the house sale there which could be months. I have some cheques left, nowhere near enough and my passport, I bet the C.A. branch here wont allow me to cash a cheque. I never realised how attached I was to card payments for everything, I stopped carring coins a decade ago, I dont know how much was in the wallet but unlikely to have been over €50 probably less. I don’t think that the term normality will ever be relevant again.And. There are certain people want to keep it that way. Almost without fail over the past ten years or so that I have tried to deal with either the banks, or CPAM there seems to have been a cock-up that I think can only be put down to the fact that they don’t want you to have control of your money or there has been a directive from above to put the mockers on les étrangères. Latest wheeze seems to be that my bank has changed the design of their software. Again. It is like a war of attrition. |
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Post by houpla on Jun 21, 2022 19:54:06 GMT 1
Sorry, forgot to quote... suein56. Not even, Sue! Just an apologetic secretary. You know, one of the people who used to do, very efficiently, what France Services is supposed to exist for  |
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Post by houpla on Jun 21, 2022 20:05:10 GMT 1
Almost without fail over the past ten years or so that I have tried to deal with either the banks, or CPAM there seems to have been a cock-up that I think can only be put down to the fact that they don’t want you to have control of your money or there has been a directive from above to put the mockers on les étrangères. Latest wheeze seems to be that my bank has changed the design of their software. Again. It is like a war of attrition. It's certainly getting worse. Even knowing that they're doing boring jobs (i.e. having to work at all) doesn't excuse the arrogance, rudeness and obstructiveness. It's not just Brits who suffer it, either. It does seem more marked since Brexit, though. If they stopped to think for just a couple of seconds, is it likely that Brits living here would have voted for Brexit? Are they truly incapable of differentiating between the 17m that did so and the ones like us who have got to live with the results? The banks, well, words fail me.....I'm quite content not to have any money, because I'd stuff it under the mattress rather than let CA near a centime of it. |
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Post by pcpa on Jun 21, 2022 23:54:59 GMT 1
I don't believe for one second that any French fonc enjoying themselves giving someone the business who just happens that day to be British would have any consciousness at all of Brexit, 6 years on there is only one small group of people who still live and breath it every day. They don't need to be capable of differentiating between someones likely voting persuasion, they have a wide armoury to ruin anyones day without needing to resort to 6 year old politics. I agree with you regarding the C.A. I was leaving them and having my usual frank exchange of views about how they cant even do that without screwing me around further, making me wait weeks for a RDV to get my hands on my money when I saw a friend from the running club behind another guichet(I didn't know what she did for a living) and she said she was the new Directrice de l'Agence so I was happy to stay and for a couple of years I was treated with the respect that any and every customer deserves and above all not screwed around or insulted, the favorite passtime of the Picards. Of course being both beautiful and competent she was promoted to the City Agence and my branch reverted to type, in January I had to sleep in the car at a service station on the way back as my bank card was refused, they had dropped the €10K per month limit to €2K without informing me and I had to wait for the kiosk to open to pay by cheque, usual insouciance at the branch telling me that it was for my own protection  resulting in me having to once again assert that its my money and not yours. Knowing that I had to make the virement for the purchase of my new property 48 hours before the acte de vente and that their system had not even allowed me to pay the €5K séquestre and I had to fight tooth and nail for them even to up the limit allowing me to transfer €10K of my money being told its impossible to have a higher amount "its for your protection" I went in person to ask what arrangements would need to be made for the transfer given I would be in Bergerac and was told I would have to come into the branch, they are such hicks that they cannot comprehend that someone would be away from their home to be at where the property they were buying was for the acte de vente. Eventually was told that I simply had to phone my conseilleur on the day and he would authorise the transfer. Well you can probably guess what happened, he was not available and I was told he would call me back, later that day I phoned again and he actually answered but denied being told to call me yet he had my name, account number and the transfer details in front of him and the number I was calling from is not known to them, anyway he refused point blank to authorise it, it was an enormous amount of money he said "vous ne rendez pas compte!" (it was about half the price of a studio in Amiens) he was not going to accept the responsability, I would have to come into the branch, I said that I would drive the 800kms and be there the next day to show him graphically what I thought of him in case he didn't understand completely what I was about to tell him, he hung up. Reluctantly I then phoned my friend the ex directrice, I really didn't want to do so, she had not invited me to transfer my account to the city branch, neither of us are any longer with the running club and I had not seen her since before the confinement. 10 minutes after speaking to her I recieved an apologetic call from the branch manager who I had never met and he helped me through the security measures for the transfer, I had all the documents to be signed, they had to be E-mailed through and the security measures were inputting of codes on the banking app recieved by SMS, the system is there its just M. Tete de bite either didn't know of them or was scared by a 5 figure sum. I went in to a CA branch here today to ask whether I could cash cheques with them (I know its a different region) the girl was very helpful, I need to get my own branch to send through an authorisation for me to draw out my own money (we are only talking about €200 at a time) I have forgotten the name of the form because I decided it simply wasn't worth the grief dealing with the idiots at my (old) home branch and regretfully I will have to tap up my friend once again, he was actually doing his utmost to draw money from various accounts 2 days before the acte de vente when he knew I was going to drive a 1600km round trip to give the good news to my personal banker. |
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Post by houpla on Jun 22, 2022 8:22:00 GMT 1
I don't believe for one second that any French fonc enjoying themselves giving someone the business who just happens that day to be British would have any consciousness at all of Brexit, 6 years on there is only one small group of people who still live and breath it every day. They don't need to be capable of differentiating between someones likely voting persuasion, they have a wide armoury to ruin anyones day without needing to resort to 6 year old politics. I'd say it's been added to the armoury, along with Covid, providing another excuse for lousy service. Exposure to the French media, which won't exactly have been painting a rosy picture of the benighted isle and it's sons, will just have reinforced existing préjugés. That's understandable. Especially when it comes down from management level. |
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Aardvark
Non-gamer
Living in soggy 22 and still wondering what's going on.
Posts: 2,172
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Post by Aardvark on Jun 22, 2022 9:09:45 GMT 1
My horrendous experience with a branch of CA is legendary but not in the same league as pcpa. Kudos to you for not completely losing it and giving the key actor a knuckle sandwich.
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Post by pcpa on Jun 22, 2022 12:04:17 GMT 1
My arms are not 800km long, the knowledge of which emboldened him, you can actually hear shoulder shrugging down the phone!
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Post by lapourtaider on Jun 22, 2022 15:22:41 GMT 1
Been with CA for 17 years. Most of the time exemplary service. Had to remind them of something a couple of times, the last time sorted there and then and an apology given.
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Post by houpla on Jun 22, 2022 15:51:26 GMT 1
Funnily enough, the manager and staff in ours were falling over themselves to be friendly, efficient and helpful when we arrived in France with a fair bit of money  I would imagine the fact that you are/were a pompier would have eased your relationships in all sorts of areas, lapourtaider? Most people would have an immediate sympathy! |
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Post by lapourtaider on Jun 22, 2022 15:58:55 GMT 1
With changes of staff I would be surprised if anyone there in the last ten years has any idea I have anything to do with the pompiers.
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exile
Member
Massif Central
Posts: 2,680
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Post by exile on Jun 22, 2022 16:37:25 GMT 1
20 years with CA and no problems so far. Mind I am with the regional group next to the German border and so a bit of German efficiency may well have rubbed off. Indeed I know they had (possibly still have) a lot of German clients
Edit to add: All of which, though interesting, is a long way from the original topic, which I think is serious enough that we should resist going off-topic.
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Post by houpla on Jun 22, 2022 18:35:14 GMT 1
Quite right, exile  I'm off to the CPAM tomorrow. Will keep you posted.... |
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ibis
Banned Member
Posts: 1,376
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Post by ibis on Jun 22, 2022 19:54:28 GMT 1
to me the topic seems like "having the cake and also eating it". Did not Macron phrase that???
Brexit happened. things will change...
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Post by pcpa on Jun 22, 2022 20:29:54 GMT 1
Quite right, exile  I'm off to the CPAM tomorrow. Will keep you posted.... Good luck, I hope they have an explanation.
Do you have anything definitive to present to them, actual known cases with details or just hearsay?
They have many reasons to screw people around at renewal and seem to revel in doing it at the last minute without ever a motivation (in the French sense) it's happened so many times to me with CPAM and the CAF that I just ignore it now, at one time they were sending out letters of radiation within days of the expiry of droites when what the letters should actually ave said was "your rights should normally be extended for another year, this may take a couple of days to execute and during that period you may see in your compte Ameli that your droites have expired, usually they will be re-instated within a couple of days, if they aren't then please contact us if we haven't written to you asking for further information or clarification"
As I said my CSS was renewed this year, it was a bit of a cliffhanger and did not show on Ameli for a week or so but I had been very late in re-applying, many Brits may not even know they have to. If there cartes were refused at the pharmacie because they hadn't reapplied or the overlap time, if they then went to the local Secu office perhaps with an attitude and expecting to speak English the person would have looked at the screen, seen they had no more rights and done no more except perhaps give them some BS about Brits no longer being allowed in the system. Just like une personne méchante at a till saying "you dont have enough money in your account" when the card is refused for whatever reason, untrue and simply being mean and trying to make a fool of you in front of other people, that has frequently happened to me, the worst being at Tesco in the UK.
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Post by houpla on Jun 23, 2022 17:02:37 GMT 1
Well at least now I know where this 'loi' came from. It is an advisory note from the Ministry de la Santé et de la Prévention (Brigitte Bourguignon was head until last weekend) to CPAMs. It confirms that S1 holders are not considered as affiliated to PUMA and don't have any right to CSS.
Maybe, if those directly affected by the withdrawal kick up a fuss, the Ambassadrice will take up the cause? Maybe not. If anyone wants a copy of the note citing the relevant Articles, please feel free to PM me.
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resulting in me having to once again assert that its my money and not yours.
I would imagine the fact that you are/were a pompier would have eased your relationships in all sorts of areas, lapourtaider? Most people would have an immediate sympathy!
I'm off to the CPAM tomorrow. Will keep you posted....
I'm off to the CPAM tomorrow. Will keep you posted....