FREE Mobile phone contract

[keith]

Just wondered if anyone can help sort out our problem with FREE Mobile. We took out a contract last summer that could be cancelled at any time. We were leaving France last September to head back to the UK, then Australia and went into the FREE shop at the Polygon, Beziers where we purchased the contract to give 10 days notice to cancel as requested. They told us they couldn't do this in the shop, we had to write a letter to BONDOUFLE. We did this but still they kept taking money from our bank account. Finally in December in desperation we cancelled the payments from the Bank. They then kept emailing us demanding payment, we replied to each of these emails (at least 4) explaining the situation but never received a reply. We then wrote a letter which we sent to PARIS (as asked on the email), sent it registered post from Australia but again have heard nothing. We are now being threatened from DCSR with enforcement action and have replied to them by email. This came back from the postmaster as a delayed delivery and I suspect it won't get delivered. We are our wit's end and don't know what to do next. We are living in Australia and don't need a french phone, they can see we have not used for several since September. Anyone who is thinking of taking up a FREE french mobile phone contract and then want to cancel it later, whatever you do, don't do this.

[Lehaut]

We have three Free mobile contracts and one house contract for internet. Due to a mix up, they tried to install ADSL instead of fibre. I too went to the shop and got the same story. They gave me a pre printed form to cancel the contract and said I had to send it to Paris. I got a bit cross when they told me I had to sent it "Recommandé avec avis de reception" and that an email would not do! Did this, and no further bother. If you sent your original letter like this, you will have a copy of the reciept. Its the only way to cancel anything in France, otherwise you end up with your problem.

From the Free site

Si vous ne souhaitez pas conserver votre numéro et donc résilier intégralement votre abonnement Free, veuillez nous faire parvenir votre demande de résiliation écrite, par courrier recommandé à l'adresse suivante :

Free Mobile

Résiliation

75371 PARIS Cedex 08

Veuillez mentionner vos nom/prénom et numéro de ligne à résilier dans votre courrier.

[Chancer]

Just forget about it.

 

If you have a delivery reciept for the recorded delivery then keep it for your piece of mind but you wont need it, the system rarely works from overseas.

[keith]

To Free Mobile

When we went into the shop in Beziers they gave us a list of address to write to cancel the contract, one of which was Freebox Resiliation, c/o PUBLIDISPATCH, 6, Rue du Desir prevost, 91075 BONDOUFLE. We wrote to them on 9th September 2016 (not registered post) expecting it to be cancelled. We wrote again on 21st December 2016 to Free Forfeit Mobile 75371 Paris Cedex 08, France again telling them to cancel the contract. This letter was sent registered post from Australia at our considerable expense. As we said we have replied to every email but get no response. It seems it is OK for you to email us but you ignore emails we send to you. We have also sent two emails to DCSR but the postmaster says they are delayed even though they are in our sent box. No other emails come back with this so we have no idea if they have been received or not. We have written twice and they have been ignored so how many times do we have to write before you take notice! As we are still in Australia, although we sent it registered post and they have to sign for it, we can't get proof of receipt once outside of Australia.

We do have proof we sent it from Australia. It also takes 2/3 weeks to get a letter from Australia to France and you will probably ignore it like everything else.

How hard can it be to cancel a phone?

[keith]

Hello

We have proof of postage from Australia but as you say we cannot get proof of delivery once outside Australia. Trouble is they are now threatening legal action for payment for October even though we cancelled it in September and they have taken payment from our account in October, November and December until we cancelled the payment ourselves, they are an absolute nightmare. They make the time to email me but won't answer my replies, really frustrating. We were with SFR the year before and had no problems.

[keith]

Just checked again and we are being threatened with legal action for payment of an invoice for 10.10.16 for 19.99 euros. Despite cancelling our contract on 9th September you continued to take money from my account in October, November and December until I stopped the payment myself. So how can I owe an invoice for 10th October??

[mint]

Keith, I can't help with your query but perhaps I can put your problem into context by simply saying "you are not alone"![:)]

SFR, that you have praised in your post, is doing exactly the same thing to me that FREE is doing to you.

I have cancelled by email and telephone, I have sent letters including a recommandé one, etc etc.  No service since end of September and I was paid up till end of October.  Every month, they send a bill and only a couple of weeks ago, they sent a threat.

Like you and others who always pay bills, I got uneasy just as you have.  I sent yet another letter last week but I won't know if that has had any effect because the next threatening letter is not due until the end of this month.

Yes, it is frustrating and sometimes worrying and I have nothing to suggest but I hope that, by telling you of my own experience, you might be comforted to know that all the phone companies seem to do this to all their customers.  You might say it is a universal problem in France!

Keep your hair on and just fend them off until they get tired of chasing you.....at least, that is my own tactic for now.

[NormanH]

This is a bit late for you, but I post it in case it may help others

(as a matter of interest I have had Free in Béziers for many years both for phone and internet and never had any problems with them, although I have had problems with Orange and SFR at my other address....)

The first thing to do (almost before cancelling the phone subscription) is to  'faire opposition' at your bank to any prélèvement they my have with you.

That way thay can't get any money from you

The other thing is to always cancel by lettre reccomandée, never by simple letter email etc.. Certainly never trust a new phone company to cancel on your behalf.

The third thing is to ignore any letters from their tame debt collectors such as Intrum in Justitia  who will write threatening letters to you that you might mistake for something from the court..

Unless they really have a court order (unlikely in this case) a huissier can't act

[Chancer]

I am not known for clarity and brevity but my last posting was a rare exception.

Just ignore them!!!!

 

Its all hot air, dont let it get to you as its likely to go on for 18 months.

[mint]

If it's any comfort to you, Keith, right after my earlier post to say that I don't expect any threatening letter until the end of the month, what popped through my post box today?

Yes, ANOTHER letter, this time with return labels for the equipment which I knew through tracking that they have had since 4 Oct 16 at 14.38 hrs!

Norman, could you give me that phrase again, stp, that you wrote to say that you were not going to pay the résiliation fee because they changed their contract with you and provided you with extra services for which you have never asked?

[NormanH]

OK but will have to burrow about in my archives...

here it is:

(the only problem is that it should have been sent within 4 months of the change)

De H Norman

Adresse

No de Ligne SFR   00 00 00 00 00

p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }

Service Client SFR Box et

fibre

TSA 73917

62978 ARRAS cedex 9

Objet : résiliation

SFR Box et

fibre

Madame, Monsieur,

Je

vous informe par ce courrier que je souhaite résilier mon forfait Box SFR et fixe contrat n° xxxx

La possibilité de résilier

ce contrat sans frais de résiliation m'est offerte, car :

je

n'accepte pas les modifications suivantes apportées à mon contrat
le 13/08/2016.

OBJET

: VOTRE OFFRE ÉVOLUE

MR H,

Pour nous, la valeur

d'un opérateur se mesure désormais à ce qu'il transporte : des

émotions !

C'est pourquoi, SFR a changé et s'est enrichi de

nouveaux contenus juste pour vous : SFR Presse, SFR Sport, SFR Play

et SFR News.

Pour continuer à vous offrir le meilleur

des contenus, nous sommes amenés à faire évoluer votre offre.

Ainsi, la location de votre box actuelle vous sera

désormais facturée trois euros par mois, à compter du 13/08/2016.

Je souhaite que ma

résiliation soit effective dès la réception du présent

courrier

Vous remerciant, par avance

d'accueillir favorablement la présente demande, je vous prie

d'agréer, Madame, Monsieur, mes salutations distinguées.

H Norman

[mint]

Thank you, Norman.  Sorry to have to put you to looking through your files.

The "within 4 months condition" should not affect me because I did tell them that the reason for stopping my contract was because of the changes that I did not request and did not want.

I wanted you to repeat for me what you said so that, after the next threat of charging a résiliation fee, I could repeat again what was said on at least 3 or 4 occasions in the past.

If you do not object, I shall be sending you a PM this evening or maybe tomorrow about completely different topics[:)]

In the meantime, I am doing nothing about SFR.  Just wait for a couple more threats.  The last time I wrote, I said that if they didn't stop harassing me, it would be ME who would be taking them to the small claims court for charging me for a month of no-internet.  I don't expect that it would be possible to make a claim for such a small amount but I wanted to show them that they couldn't keep on bullying me without my trying to land a blow on them!

[keith]

Hello Chancer

You are most probably right I just have a worry that they could do something to our french bank account I know the french can have some very funny laws and make a huge issue out of nothing

Thanks Keith

[keith]

Sorry to hear your having problems it is as you say a french thing ,we do the same thing in australia every year and it is so simple, next year we will put up with the dearer charges and just use our english phone , it is very annoying to be threatened when in actual fact they owe us for 3 months money

Keith

[Jonzjob]

We were put in a similar position with Citroën a few years ago. We were presented with a 2000€ bill for a repair that should never have happened, cat converter failure after a few thousand Km. I wrote a stinking letter to the CEO of Citroën and the bill was quashed within a few days. The complaint from me had been going on for ages and I was getting nowhere until I started to rattle top top dogs cage.

We will be cancelling our Free contract in the next few months and if there are any problems I will be contacting the boss, Xavier Niel (he sounds like an interesting bloke?)

This may be of help?

https://en.selectra.info/broadband-phone-france/providers/free-contact#post

Scroll down a little and there's the address, I think, and their English customer line number. At the bottom of the page is their HQ address in Paris!

Good luck. The bosses don't like their cages being rattled [blink]

[Chancer]

Yes its is a very French thing, its a real shame that Free at least in your case are behaving like all the others because Free is a very UNfrench company and M. Neil is a rare enlightened Frenchman to follow his own instincts and not the herd.

 

Sadly its so ingrained that even with someone like him at the top it will continue, its standard French commercial practice and he probably has given tacit approval by doing nothing, across the whole leaving customer base it recovers some of their costs of buying and sending out the equipment (they just throw it away when its returned) because 99.99% of the customers are French and conditioned to accept being shafted and will pay up. 

 

It was a real shock to me to find that the most sensible and educated French people said "if they say you must pay then you must do so" and were totally shocked and worried when they realised that I would do nothing of the sort, it was naive but well intentioned advice, they genuinely thought that I would end up behind bars.

[alittlebitfrench]

You are wrong Chancer. Most French people don't end up in this situation in the first place. If they do, most will fight it out.

Recorded letter to SFR/FREE and recorded letter to the huissier.

Job done.

[mint]

[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]You are wrong Chancer. Most French people don't end up in this situation first place. If they do, most will fight it out.

Recorded letter to SFR/FREE and recorded letter to the huissier.

Job done.[/quote]

If only it were as simple as JUST sending a recorded letter!  You clearly have not read how Keith has tried innumerable ways of contacting his provider.  Come to that, so have I.

Bully for these French people who don't end up with these sorts of situations.  Must just be us stoopid Brits that get into such a pickle?

And you think we are incapable of "fighting it out"?  What do you think Keith and I and countless others are doing other than resisting and fighting our corner?

I suspect that you really think that we are so stupid and inept and so ignorant of "how things are done in France" that 1) we shouldn't be living in France at all and 2) that we fully deserve all the unpleasant things that we get.

Nice knowing we get such a sympathetic hearing and sensitive help from you who is after all a little bit French[blink]  Thank goodness, the real French people that I know are actually not at all like you[:D] 

[alittlebitfrench]

Sorry Mint, I was responding to Chancers position of doing nothing.

OK...our story with SFR.

Stopped contract and received instructions to send router back with all the other suff.

We boxed it, took to an SFR appointed courier and it was sent away.

1 week later we received an invoice (150 Euros) for the router because they said they had not received it....but they received everything else.

We phoned SFR the bloke at the SFR reception company said it was a mistake and they had received it. He will sort it out.

1 week later received a letter from huissier demanding payment.Obviously bloke did not sort it out and now we were dealing with computers.

Telephoned huissier and explained situation. They put the file on hold. As advised by them, sent another recommended letter to SFR and huissier.

Telephoned hussier after they received the letter and the file has been closed.

I would not take Chancers advice and ignore it unless you don't plan to come back to France. It could bite you in the bum if you try and set up another account with another company.

Welcome to France

[mint]

OK, albf, apology accepted.

[Chancer]

Everyone is happy to take the advice that corresponds to how they feel, there are no right or wrongs except for in ALBFland, doing nothing like not rising to the bait is what I do best.

 

I have been on the recieving end of  numerous false huissiers, huissiers they aint, real huissiers dont get involved in buying invented debt for 1ct and then harass the poor ex customers, they will get involved after a judgement has been made by a tribunale and many of their communications make you believe that is what is happening, clue [I] they do not send stuff by LRAR which a real convocation would be.

 

The OP like myself complied in the first instance by sending an LRAR as requested, I do nothing after that and ignore all correspondance, I tell them that I will do that in the first letter, all correspondance but LRAR's that is but they never send them which is why you can be confident in ignoring the letters, texts, phone calls, e-mails. It will be so,d on several more times for less and less money to more threatening and less scrupulous pretend huissiers and in my very considerable experience it will end after 18 months but the tone will become more and more threatening as you get harrassed by those lower and lower down the scale of probity.

 

And I am not proud of having considerable experience, quite the opposite, it depresses me to live in a country that does this systematically and its considered normal (at least by all the people around here), I really dont want to become old and vulnerable in this country, and before anyone says that the UK is no better I'm sure that you are right but when I move I move on, not back so it wont be the UK.