For those that shoot target or hunting. Has anyone found a decent exporter for firearms and ammunition? I saw a lot of UK items I fancied compared to French prices but I struggled with arms exporters and their fees. No anti-shooting replies please.
Interesting and valid points Richard. I have often questioned the fact that certain items are so expensive in France.
A few years back when I didn't have a car, I ordered my fridge freezer, washing machine and electric oven from the local ironmongers. The reason being that paying for the delivery, albeit just from the next town, added over 200€ to the price and only got them dropped off at the front door of my residence. To get them taken up to my 3rd floor flat would have cost another 100€!!! The extra 75€ that it cost to buy them locally was more than compensated for by the 48 hour delivery and installation, with the old fridge being removed to my cellar (the manager asked me where I wanted them to put it) and them not only taking all the rubbish away but also cleaning the floor after themselves! Add to this the free after sales service for up to 12 months and Bob's your uncle. I also got a full training session on how to get the best out of my new equipment and how to save electricity to boot. I suspect that I was one of the lucky ones as I've heard horror stories from friends but I believe that there is still good service to be had, at a reasonable price, (albeit more expensive than the UK) BUT it does depend on where you are and who you know.
When it comes to postal deliveries, I usually try to meet my post person when I move in and introduce myself. I explain that I get lots of deliveries from Amazon France and overseas and we come up with a plan of action for any parcels that may arrive when I'm not there. All it usually takes is a cup of coffee in cold weather and a bottle of wine at Christmas.
I realise that I am probably one of the lucky ones and of course a permanent resident so I don't have the difficulty of not always being here but I wanted to share a positive experience in light of certain recent discussions ;)
Happy Thursday everyone - it's nearly the weekend :D
I say they should mind their own business. Live and let live.
Well stated and it's how I operate too. I have lost track of the number of ex-pats that have slated me for buying things outside of France - quoting supporting French business as a reason that I should pay a lot more and accept crap after sales service. Support my family first I say.
I get books delivered by Amazon in the US and it doesn't take very long. I got my new Freebox delivered to a local pub which I thought strange but I now know the system in France with these drop off points which can be anywhere.
Relative to expense of things in France let's not forget the 19.6% TVA tax. When I order the books from the US there is no tax on either end but if I ordered something within France the TVA is applied.
Totally agree, Simon. I get stuff of Amazon in no time, and when I have things delivered to 'relais' they nearly always arrive on time. Only once has a package gone astray.
But then I live next to Montpellier.
I recently bought a Siemens washing machine from MDA retailing at €900 for €750, so you just have to go to the right shops which are mostly located in cities. The delivery guys took out the old one, put in the new one, connected it up and tested it, and took the old one away and all for €35.
I think it comes down to who is driving the van. Where we are a lot of the deliveries are done by sub-contractors on behalf of UPS/Fedex/DPD etc. A lot of them do their job properly and go out of their way to be helpfull. Others take short cuts like " I can't find your house, I left your parcel at the bakers" The worse one is " your address is incomplete, please give more info" which is quite often used by UPS drivers who want to see a house number and street name. I suspect this is more a case of them only having 1 parcel for our village and don't want to come all the way just for that. 2 years ago the Embassy prepared a new passport in 24 hours but UPS took a week to deliver it.
Postlady is the most helpful of the lot, last week she gave me her mobile no so I can ring her if I'm expecting a parcel and can't wait till she gets to us at midday and arrange to collect it from her elsewhere on the round
I have had an overall good service on my orders. Mostly ordered online stuff, Amazon (.co.uk & .fr) . Also I order a lot of car parts from big companies (French & UK based) to keep my 'hobby' running, again all arrived in 'good time'
The only problem I have hit, was ordering online from a french supplier of caravan parts........ ordered Aug 27th & the part finally arrived on Oct 5th! They took the money in Aug. Despite my writing, phoning & emailing I got no reponse. Eventually I found they had a Facebook page....... a couple of 'choice comments' on there by me stirred up a response.... however I was told, "well you have your part and its in good order, what are you complaining about?" Gotta love em'!
Oh, I do find some 'signed for' items dumped on my doorstep, I think postie signs them himself!
In 2010 I did a lot of research into the idea of setting up an e commerce similar to one my sister runs in the UK. As soon as I looked into delivery for the products I gave up on the idea. My sister can send parcels all over the world for half the price of a parcel going just across Toulouse.
For sending boxes from the Uk I have used Parcels please but recently the prices have increased ( from £14 to £124 for a 20Kg box) so we had to sift the internet to find a delivery at £18. Both times the delivery was fast, 2days door to door but not very gentle. I recommend to anybody using this type of service to really make sure items are suitably protected as the parcels get thrown about.
Richard,
May I surmise that you probably lived in town when in the UK and that you now live in the country?
I live in a big city (Toulouse) where I can order anything on Amazon before 4pm and it arrives the next day before 11am.
The shops here are full of cut-price electrical items at prices that can be compared with your UK prices. It's called competition ... and you don't find that much out in the country.
It comes down to this: the UK is now so built-up and urbanized (apart from Scotland and N.I.) that big-town services such as postal, broadband, medical etc are available more or less everywhere. France, however, is still a very rural country with vast tracts of sparsely inhabited land. Those who live in the cities get much better services (post, health, transport) than those in the country.
The Brits tend to live in the country and therefore tend to grouse a bit more about lack of this or that.
Maybe I'm lucky but I can't think of a single delivery problem - if anything things seem to arrive earlier than I expect.
But with you completely on prices - there's even a difference between Mr Bric in Gerardmer and Mr Bric in St Dié - they're about 20km apart but the Gerardmer is generally 10-15% more expensive - how does that work?
I went nuts over an Amazon order a while back and had a post up. It was like a bl**dy yoyo. It did not get to me. In the end, after complaining, the people sent out to my address set out wrong and lo and behold it arrived in 24 hours. I've had several Amazon orders telling me this address does not exist although twice they have been orders that Amazon split into two and three mailings respectively with one and two reepectively arriving but the second and third not! I've been to the post, not them because the parcels do not reach the local office where my name is recognised, so somewhere else but nobody knows where. My OH has never had this problem. We have an alternative address we use for surprises at our hairdresser, twice we have had emails to say that no such address is known. She has only been in business 18 years, so perhaps they are not used to her yet - I say cynically.
OK, other deliveries do much the same but some French companies do not send out an email depite it being an online order. So when you call them two weeks later to find out where... Obvious, it is your fault!
I am learning to live with it, complain bitterly, ask to speak to supervisors, managers or others higher up the food chain and not take eyewash. Things are gradually improving.
Food for thought. I've often wondered about the sometimes huge difference in retail prices between UK/France/online, etc. Certainly part of it is the much higher taxation factor here. A retailer is not necessarily greedy but subject to huge cotisations for employees, etc. and so on. What I didn't expect was how virtually nothing you buy here comes with free delivery. Buy a fridge or a sofa and more often than not delivery is extra (based on a scale of mileage) or you drag it home yourself. Almost all my purchases these days are online (needs must on a basic pension) and usually have to wait for a friend travelling across from UK for delivery. I see small items on eBay UK that come with free UK delivery that might be about the size of a USB memory stick. Look to see what the charge is for post to France and suddenly from FREE it notches up to between £7.50 and a tenner! When this topic is discussed someone always bleats about "What if the thing is faulty?" Well my answer to that little nugget is "What happens here?" You have a battle on your hands. You will almost never get a straight exchange no matter how obvious the fault. The retailer has the right to send it for repair. So they have your money, and the item which may or may not return actually fixed within a month or so. I once played the game with a fridge freezer bought in a large supermarket branch and it was repaired in situ twice and sent away twice being damaged in transit and then wheeled across my light coloured carpet leaving twin tracks of grease from the back of the lorry. Fixed? Not on your life. After 5 months I went into the shop pushing the offending article in ahead of me on a sack barrow and raised Hell until I got my money back. Even sent a carefully worded letter to the Head Honcho of after sales service (sic.) and to this day haven't even received an acknowledgement of the complaint. I wouldn't hesitate to buy online from a UK source and with customer service here being what it is, happy to take the risk. I am hearing that more and more French are looking abroad for bargains and as the internet gets up to strength here it will probably start to pinch the normal retailers in the backside. Trouble is, it will be the smaller ones that go to the wall first and I think those are the ones that quite often DO try hard to give a good service in order to protect their reputations. The big boys couldn't care less.
Hi Richard, I've been an internet shopper with deliveries to France from many of my favourite UK stores (see my profile page for my UK shopping website) for a few years now - I've only had 1 parcel go missing (from Next) and 1 which bizarrely was returned back to Amazon without ever being delivered BUT I've probably had over 100 items delivered free of charge (from UK suppliers) or for a very low fee. I also use Ebay UK & then ship with Parcels Please from a UK address (family!) back to France. Recently I bought my Dyson replacement for 150 euro less than same model in France.
BUT that said if it was an item like a white good I'd buy in France so they can install/replace easily if defective e.g. washing machine etc. It's not worth the hassle trying to return that to the UK.
I'm not sure why there is such a differential in pricing - it's not like the service is superior to justify it - far from it in fact.
As for delivery - it's usually very quick 3-5 days from ordering...perhaps it depends on where in France you are - we're in Herault - oh and not forgetting whether La Poste is on strike or not!
I frequently get registered post / parcels with work, our usual delivery folks are great and we rarely have issues but during the summer or at Christmas where extra staf are employed despite the fact that our house is clearly signposted things are often very late, or even when we are in, we find a note in the postbox and we have to go and collect from the post office…