Well who’d have thought it ? 
Montpellier recently became the first place in the Occitanie region to have a 24 hour supermarket.
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On a different tack… Leclerc are offering to let me (and everyone) pay by cheque this week… and the cheque will not be banked until the beginning of May… ??? !!!
I foresee problems ahead, for those who already have financial “challenges”… building up extended credit for groceries is not the answer IMO 
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Hi Stella, I can’t believe people are still paying bills by cheque !!! This is the 21st century after all !
Hopefully payments by cheque will soon be a thing of the past.
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Not until the way the health system functions is changed, they won’t!
It took me well over a decade of being here before I realised just why the French are so attached to their cheques!
I don’t pay by cheque in the supermarkets… I got the message on my “stoneage” mobile phone…
But I see a lot of folk doing just that, as I wait my turn at the checkout…
I pay for heating oil by cheque and logs… and for various bookings, where a completed slip+cheque is required… usually by the Associations/Clubs…
also, the our family Doc takes cash or cheque… and I rarely have much cash…
There’s nowt worse than having to wait in a supermarket queue or some old codger or biddy to pay by cheque.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzs
Fortunately less and less places accept cheques.
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Actually, I know nearly everybody around here… including the cashiers… so it is quite a friendly time all round…
On occasions, the card machine does not work… my, that does put the cat among the pigeons… and takes even longer, while the whole queue consoles the poor, red-faced customer… 
I confess it still puzzles me a bit - hold over from French attitudes to credit?
Lots of places require payment by cheque (all écoles, collèges and lycées for a start, even though some also take cards, lots of associations, sports clubs, children’s activities and trips). I like cheques.
Cards are so easy, do you think there could be a link to universal card use in the UK and the fact that 28% of the population is in credit card debt as opposed to France’s 8% ?
(article in the Independent January 2019)
Obviously if you haven’t put children through school here you won’t have noticed this.
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If you are writing a whacking great cheque at the dentist etc (I did 586 last week and 2 lots of 411 over the last six weeks ), then a cheque will give your mutuelle refund a chance to kick in before the money is debited from your account - especially if, as it totally standard practice, the dentist / orthodontist doesn’t pay your cheque in for a few days to give your Carte Vitale and mutuelle refund time to function.
These days I always write cheques for anything medical and like @vero says, for anything school / club related too .
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I am not particularly keen on Supermarkets staying open longer - I think it is good for them to be closed for a while, it may be considered a bit quaint but I don’t want it to be the same as in UK, where Tesco have actually reduced the number of 24 hour supermarkets.
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IMO there is only so much money to go round… I can’t buy more simply because the shops are open longer. I admit that some folk on shifts etc… do have a problem, from time to time… but that can surely be worked-around. It’s not rocket science.
I worked strange hours, at one time… (now I’m just strange)… anyway, it meant that I had to follow a strict routine as far as shopping was concerned… and certain large items had to wait until my day off … or whatever…
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Thing is…guess what…not everyone works 9 to 5 during the day - imagine that??? Millions of people work outside 9 to 5 - I did it for most of my career. For the most part I ‘worked-around’ the fact that supermarkets were closed when I wasn’t working - as you observe Stella - not ‘rocket science’ - just bloody inconvenient! It was just amazing when supermarkets started to open 24/24 in the UK - made things so much easier for me and my colleagues - a real game changer. Then I moved to France and stepped back in time - for that particular service!
As for cheques - they’ll be confined to dustbin before too long - absolutely archaic and no place in the 21st century :-
get back to your golf… 
Huh ???
Wish that my heating oil supplier accepted cheque and logs
ah well, we are in deepest France… a little bit of bartering goes a long way…
Yes, where men are men and sheep are very worried…