Stand and Deliver!

As someone who thinks in song lyrics, I cannot write the title to this post without immediately thinking of Adam Ant and the almighty crush I had on him when I was a teenager. However, my subject for today is not Ant music, but La Poste!

Suffice it to say, I’ve had a few issues with deliveries since arriving here in France. To be fair, lots of parcels probably get delivered successfully by La Poste every week, however, I seem to have developed a talent for being the exception.

But first, I did initially have a good delivery experience. Before leaving Australia, I packed up six large boxes, intending to send them via ‘SendmyBag’. The boxes were each not to exceed 30 kgs in weight. Slight problem - I have no weighing scales in my house except for the kitchen scales that I use for cooking which were not going to handle a 30kg box.

So, after years and years of no scales in the house (deliberately - that’s another story) - I went to Kmart and bought some. Only to realise that once I had dumped a huge box on top of the scales, I couldn’t actually see the weight of the box - d’oh!

I thought about it for a moment.

Google said ‘get someone to get on the scales, weigh them, then get them to hold the box and weigh them again.’

Errrrrrmm - that someone would be me and as fit and strong as I like to think I am, I was not hopping on and off the scales while clutching six 30kg boxes. No problem. We got some scales with an app which flashed up the weight on my phone. Don’t you love technology?!

So, the boxes were carried down our stairs one by one and hauled into the boat. Then they went on their merry way to France. A couple of days after we arrived in our rental house, one box arrived. Which led me to wonder why only one box had arrived.

What had happened to the other five?

They arrived 3 days later.

No idea why they were separated but at least they arrived without any problems and although they looked a little bit bashed up, the contents were fine.

That was the good experience.

The next thing to be delivered was a dog bed. That was ordered on Amazon and did arrive - just a day or so after the date they had promised.

That was the ok experience.

Then I ordered a coffee machine - from Amazon. I looked at all the options and chose the one which would deliver before the weekend when my partner was arriving back from the UK. I don’t drink coffee but I can’t think of anything worse than drinking the instant variety so I felt he should have a decent source of coffee when he got here.

The day of the supposed delivery I got a notification ‘your delivery is arriving today’.

Like a fool, I stayed home ALL DAY waiting for the coffee machine.

It never appeared.

At approximately 7pm I got another message. ‘Your delivery has been delayed’ - Like I wouldn’t have noticed?

The delivery finally arrived approximately 10 days later - and was delivered to a neighbour who brought it over.

That was the crap experience.

Now to the unbelievably crap experience.....

Before leaving Australia, I got scripts for some meds and went to the pharmacy to get them dispensed so that I could bring them over in my suitcase. I went to 3 different pharmacies and unfortunately none of them had stock so in the end I ran out of time and came to France without the meds.

I ended up asking my long suffering and super helpful daughter if she could oblige.

She got my meds dispensed and went to the Post Office to post them for me.

No can do.

We needed a letter from the GP to say what the meds were and who they were for. I obtained the letter and sent it to my daughter to print it out. Great! The meds were finally on their way.

I followed the tracking link.

The parcel left Australia promptly.

It arrived in Paris promptly.

Then it went nowhere.

For several weeks.

I decided to post on one of the ‘Aussies in France’ Facebook groups to see what other people’s experiences had been.

I rarely post on Facebook and by the end of this, I rather wished I hadn’t.

So many stories:

‘La Poste is not authorised to carry medication, you’ll never see it again’

‘They will charge you a huge amount of duty’

‘You need to send a courier to Roissy to go and get it’

‘Never send anything internationally through the French postal system’

I decided it would be a miracle if I ever saw my meds.

I booked an online appointment with a GP here who spoke English and asked her if she could write me a prescription. She had never heard of the medication I asked her for but said she would put the exact name on the script and then the pharmacy would make a substitution with the French version.

I went to the pharmacy.

Blank look.

Lots of searching through manuals and online databases.

They did not know what my medication was and couldn’t find an equivalent form. And for the record, it is not something obscure (not in Australia anyway!).

Hmmmmm. Back to the meds sitting in Paris. I lodged a complaint with La Poste. They came back to me quite quickly and said that I was not the owner of the parcel, the sender was the owner of the parcel. So the sender would have to open an enquiry with Australia Post.

Australia Post predictably came back and, despite doing an investigation were unable to tell us what had happened to the parcel.

However the Australia Post enquiry must have nudged someone somewhere because, next, I received a letter in the mailbox from La Poste saying that they needed more information about what the parcel was and they needed to see the actual script.

The letter said if we don’t hear from you by May 19^th, we will return your parcel to the sender.

I received the letter on May 20^th.

I wrote back to them immediately and sent them what I had. I was banking on the fact that there had been 4 public holidays in France during May and that half the staff were probably on holiday and might not notice that my reply was a day late.

Bingo!

The next day they wrote back and asked me for the invoice. I wrote to long suffering daughter - feeling bad for bothering her all the time and said ‘I don’t suppose you have the receipt?’ - She didn’t but she did have a screen shot of the payment from her bank account.

At this point the penny had finally dropped - La Poste just wanted a value for the meds so that they could calculate the duty- which is annoying given that it was for my personal use but hey ho.

I sent them the screen shot and then heard nothing.

In the meantime, I had organised an online appointment back in Australia and got another script. This time, long suffering daughter sent it to the UK where it arrived within a week.

Ten days later, I decided to check the tracking on the original parcel. It said that La Poste had tried to deliver it two days ago on Wednesday.

Ermmmmm someone was in the house that entire day. I remain to be convinced that any delivery attempt actually took place.

So on Friday, I looked up the opening hours of the local post office - they opened at 2pm - apparently lunch runs from 9am - 2pm on Fridays.

I headed over, rehearsing my French as I went.

I asked the lady for the parcel. She looked at me blankly. She checked all the parcels on her shelf. None of them were in my name.

I showed her my tracking email.

She looked up and said (in French) ‘Aaaaah - come back after 4pm’

At this point I was a little puzzled. If they’d tried to deliver it on Wednesday, why was I coming back after 4pm on Friday? Strange.

I dutifully came back at 4pm and there was my parcel - magically - it had appeared. With a duty bill attached to it.

So there you have it - my parcel travelled from Sydney to Paris in a few days.....

The last few hundred kilometres took several weeks.

I have now instructed anyone who might be considering sending me a parcel in France (admittedly a fairly small group of people) not to bother.

À bientôt!