Our life in France - Faith is restored
Many of you will know from previous posts here that we have had an horrendous experience with garages and our car and have over the last 5 years spent an absolute fortune mainly at our local village garage, it does not bode well that someone in your own village could rip you off not once but twice but that has been covered enough, today I feel that our faith has been restored in the French garage system.
Firstly we have very large tyres on our car and we needed two new ones, we knew that if we went to a supplier here we would be totally ripped off so we looked on Ebay where we have purchased them before but sadly very few on the English site will bother to post to France so we went to an online Company in Germany called 123 Pneu we got two tyres for 110€ approx £90, free delivery and they arrived in 48 hours, one garage here wanted 168€ for one tyre.
Then of course we had to find a garage to fit them and balance them, well I have to say it instilled fear in me but a Friend a few villages away said he had used his local garage for some repairs and he was very pleased with them, off we went to see this garage man, we arrived and were met by Madame Garage man, she was very smiley and I asked in my best French could they fit and balance two tyres, the answer was yes, I said today, there was a sharp sucking on the teeth and flicking through the diary, she said not today (Tuesday) Thursday was the soonest her husband could do it as he was very tired (bless) so we arranged to go back at 2pm Thursday, as the official lunch break is between 12 -2pm - she quickly said but would this interfere with our eating? we said not at all.
We arrive at the garage at 13h45 expecting to wait but Mr Garage man (who still looked very tired) was waiting for us and ushered us straight in.
We sit in reception where Madame starts to do our invoice and I feel I did very well with all her questions, in fact John looked at me at one point and said "when did your French get so good"?, we even had a laugh because she went in to the workshop to get our mileage and when she came back she said she had got into the left side of the car and there were no dials and she thought "we have a problem" then she realised that it was all on the right side, we all ended up laughing, this is such a contrast to our previous experiences at the local garage where once the owner hid behind a car so we wouldn't see him, I know we have only had two tyres fitted but I feel we can now go to this garage and get a friendly welcome which goes a long way when your French isn't so good and you are feeling vulnerable.
Yes indeed our faith is restored - lesson learnt if a garage doesn't behave quite right towards you go somewhere else, why should they have your hard earned dosh.
a bientot Roz
