GOGS...Grumpy Old Gits Society..

My usual whinge about postal charges this morning

Pendles have been their usual efficient selves but as ever, they insist on tracked and signed for postage. This adds a pretty big lump to the cost of bits.

I assume that the system is set up to register the package with a bar code that has to be scanned to say it has arrived. There is one on the label.

NOPE.

As usual, it just gets bunged in the post box in spite of the big 'R' which should tell the French end that it should be signed for. If it doesn't have the usual French paperwork, it won't be treated any differently than normal post.

So I've paid an additional £5 for no good reason at all. That's a pair of tyres at least!

I'm getting seriously charred-off with this Winter. I never cope with the season particularly well, and we haven't (yet......) had the volume of snow we had a few years back, but I don't remember ever feeling the cold as badly. It must be old-age creeping-up on me.

I wish I could hibernate.

Don't get me wrong I love living in France, but it can be super frustrating.

As Gordon says La Poste, you pay a fortune to have things delivered by the them or a transporter, what do they do ( I have all my parcels delivered to work as there's no one at home during the week):-

Leave it in the letter box or elsewhere without signature.

Sign with your name, strange I wasn't there that day! Then leave it in the letter box or elsewhere.

Leave a missed delivery note when there's lots of people in ajointing offices and i've popped to the loo or to get a coffee.

Tracking, a parcel arrives in France with tracking up to date on a Thursday night or Friday, then nothing, the following Monday or even Tuesday it's still marked as being in eg, Paris, then either it gets delivered say during Tuesday or Wednesday, otherwise I start chasing the item, it turns up the next day and the tracking is suddeenly change to "out for delivery" or "delivered".

The number of cars with lights out (not normally just one light, but several)

Driving standards, they don't know how roundabouts work or slip rounds

Tailgateing, then busting a gut to overtake you to turn off at the next junction.

Customer service, what customer service!!! as CMOTD, i've been enquiring about 36 12v domestic batteries for work (quite a lot of money 3-4000 euros) emailed various places and the most local didn't even reply.

We need a new van for work, go in the main dealers and the treat you like s*** because it's just a van, I walked out of one after 15 minutes, fed up with being ignored. They obviously don't want our money.

Our local tourist office (bearing in mind France survives on tourism) is open:-

Low season, weekdays 09.00 - 12.00 and 14.00 - 17.00

Mid season (May, June and September), weekdays and Saturday, 10.00 - 12.00 and 14.00 -18.00

High season (July/August, catering for the French holidays), everyday, 10.30 - 12.00 and 15.00 - 18.00

There's hundreds of them that "work" there, but they're always shut when the tourists are about, so what happens they come into my office and start pestering me/us and when you can't give them the info they want they get the hump.

I'll stop there, i'll be here for ever otherwise.

I nearly forgot, the website Leboncoin, like Gumtree/Friday-ad. I look on there for slot car stuff, you find a good deal, make contact to be told "that's not the price are you some sort of idiot", " that's for one item, not all three"

or more recently, for some buildings and barriers the price was 30€, so I said i'd pay the 30 plus the postage, the reply was "I want 170€"

Defiantly instead of definitely!

Cheers

John

I live on the border to France and lived there for a year a while back. Here near the German border they drive better but I can confirm when we drove from north to the south the farther south we go the more drifting we were seeing.

I am generally leery of people who hug the line too close but here people were doing 130 kph with both wheels and even a headlight over the the line... and then they act shocked when you honk !

Luckily my French is good enough to pass off as a French-speaking Swiss (because I am slow) so I seldom get bad treatment. In Alsace it is weird because many speak German (or rather can but will only if they want to be nice).

Yeah the opening times in general have always flummoxed me on the continent. Why are the stores closed when the people who have money don't have time to shop?

The local toy store actually does a decent job. She is open during lunch, takes a late break and open until 7:30 PM. She also offers free home delivery and packaging services.

Still, she claims they are treading water...

Parcel deliveries..........

20 years ago I was a courier for one of the large delivery companies. Admittedly this was before internet shopping kicked-off, but we were instructed never to leave parcels anywhere other than the address they were consigned to. Sometimes they even had to be signed for by the addressee.

I'm sick to death of delivery drivers coming to our door and asking us to take parcels for next door. Some days they get multiple deliveries. There has just been another one and I know they are in there because I can hear them (we live in a terrace) but yet again they won't answer the door to the delivery dude. It will probably stay here for at least a couple of days now. This happens on a virtually daily basis. Leading up to Christmas it was a frakkin' nightmare, we had more of their gifts in our porch than our own in the living room. They left it a week or more before collecting them all. I did try politely suggesting to the bloke next-door that they have their stuff delivered to his business, but that fell on deaf ears.

It's a different matter when they get their (almost daily) take-aways delivered, though.

Yup the old parcel thing was a real pain when we lived in an apartment.

One family on the ground floor had deliveries every day but pretended not to be in or simply couldn't be bothered.

Makes you wonder why!

On the occasion when we were'nt in to receive a parcel we always had to rearrange postage, a real pain with RM since it meant at least 2 days delay.

Mind you one of the delivery guys was a real pain.

I started ignoring buzzes but they wouldn't give up.

On one occasion I had to warn the sob to stop buzzing 'cause he wouldn't stop.

but enough from me

I'm with Stu on the "so" business.

The word is a conjunction, not an introduction. If you turn up and say to your builder, "So, how long before the trenches are filled?" That is a conjunction between expectation and actuality and acceptable. Has been for ever. But if you say to him, "So, I was thinking of putting a door there" THAT IS NOT!

And neither is the use of "a" before a word starting with a noun. It is an ugly glothal stop that is completely unnecessary. And that extends to the use of the basic word "a" or "the", before a vowel. We have always said "thee island", for instance, in a nice running sound, but now, since that fake posh boy Fogel started it years ago on Survivor or whatever crappy "reality" programme it was, even the BBC allow it. It has become the norm. I think there can be no pronunciation department any more. In fact I listen to Radio 4 so little these days compared with last few years that I no longer care if they go or not. John Humphries, bless his cotton socks, has complained about it, but with Millenials in charge and a host of skinny jeaned, be-whiskered, short back and sides, trendy hipsters and their mates running it from Manchester the battle is, I fear, already lost.

Finally these same retards speak every statement as if they are asking a question. The Australian rising intonation is everywhere. I now quickly turn Radio 4 off and switch to Classic FM in the hope that I haven't hit their advert spot, or I tune to BBC 6Music where there is precious little talking, except maybe in the songs, when I quickly switch to 4Extra or put a CD on. In fact I find silence or a long CD is now my only option to the ruination of my language by lazy swine and trendies.

John Humphries, of earlier, blessed footware, also complained correctly about trendy historians using the past present tense. Where somebody long dead appears in their talk to still be alive. The past tense exists for all of us and especially, one would have thought, for historians.

Cheers,

Martin