PARIS -- France has more broadband DSL customers than most countries, including the United States. But if you happen to be one of the millions of customers having major problems with your connection, then life can be a living hell. High-tech service in France is like service in a Parisian cafe -- intermittent and snooty.
Not a day goes by when 60 Millions de Consommateurs, the French equivalent of Consumer Reports, isn't inundated with complaints from DSL subscribers about a faulty connections, abusive pricing practices or incompetent technical support. Nearly half of all complaints are DSL-related, the publication says.
"Imagine if one customer out of four complained that a bakery's bread was not fresh," the publication wrote.
According to the magazine, one customer was charged more than $120 to call the technical-support hotline of ISP Neuf and still couldn't get a DSL or telephone connection for nine months. Another unhappy customer tried to cancel her service from Orange, but the company continued to debit her account more than $40 per month, even after it confirmed it had received her request in writing. Another customer's ISP admitted that an underground cable was damaged, but simply said they couldn't give a date when it would be repaired.
One government watchdog organization, the Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répressions des Fraudes, reported that DSL service complaints surged 17.4 percent in 2006.
A spokesman from France Telecom, parent company of Orange, acknowledged what he called "forces majeurs," which he said account for periodic broadband disruptions throughout the country. He listed typical causes such as power failures, floods and other "acts of God."
The France Telecom spokesman admitted that other problems crop up, such as router and PC conflicts, and software glitches, which the average consumer cannot remedy. These problems are compounded by the reluctance -- sometimes the outright refusal -- of French ISPs to provide onsite maintenance.
One ISP, Club Internet, recently remedied problems on its saturated networks only after weeks of outages all over France, without volunteering any reimbursement for lost service.
Requests for reimbursement for poor service are often denied or simply ignored. Legal recourse is an alternative, but litigation in France is significantly costlier and more cumbersome than in the United States.
Annual contracts can oblige customers to continue paying for the service, while the glitches are ignored. Often, faulty DSL lines, modems or other problems that require onsite maintenance to remedy are left to the customer.
Ludovic Guyot, a technician for New-Tek Informatique, a PC reseller and onsite network-support firm in Brittany, said many of his clients are in a helpless state.
"My customers were calling me to come and I told them there was nothing I could do to fix their problems (as an onsite technician)," Guyot said.
French consumers having DSL difficulties usually must pay about 46 cents a minute to talk to customer support, but even if you're willing to spend the money, the quality of the call-center technicians is often poor. ISPs tend to respond to e-mails sent to technical support with boilerplate solutions that don't solve the specific issue.
The problem is that there are at least 10 DSL companies battling for a share of the French market. The companies do a good job of selling services, often bundling phone and TV service with DSL. Unfortunately, the companies make promises to gain subscribers without having the infrastructure in place to make good on them.
Despite often appalling DSL service in France, there has been no severe public backlash.
In a country where government controls keep most critical services -- like medical care -- reliable and affordable, people are used to taking their complaints through the proper channels.
Elected officials have pledged action to force ISPs to improve their services, but little has been done. Last year, for example, a meeting was held between government representatives, ISPs and consumer associations, during which the DSL providers agreed to allow customers to terminate service without having to pay for the full-year contract.
In addition, some ISPs agreed not to charge customers 46 cents a minute when they were put on hold when calling customer support. But, says Benjamin Douriez, a journalist with 60 Million de Consommateurs, this "courtesy" does not represent the norm.
"What they are offering is too late and too little," he says.
