When I was in France, I used to carp quite a lot about the customer service numbers, which were effectively 900 numbers, i.e. calling them cost the customer money, rather than costing the business money (as with an 800 number). While I still think making the customer pay money to get service is not a good strategy, I'm also fairly convinced, as I sit here listening to the hold music of my student loan company, that making the customer pay in time is not a good strategy either. When I finally managed to get to the 'speak to a customer service representative' section (which, by the way, I had to find via GetHuman because their menus didn't seem to have the 'talk to a person' option), the automated voice told me 'the expected wait time for this call is less than... 25 minutes.' Great. Thanks. I'll get a drink. And rearrange my blog. Write an opera. Knit some socks.

In actual fact it's worse here (France) in that we pay twice: we pay per minute (generally 0.34 € per minute) and we pay in time. We had problems with our cable phone yesterday. I called the Tech Support hotline (0.34 €/min.) and 47 minutes later we arrived at the conclusion that someone would look in to it and get back to me. An hour and 15.98 € later the problem was solved but no one called me. The electricity has cut off here in our "town" many times. We call the electric company. We actually pay double per minute as we have to use our mobile phone to call when the electricity is off (all of our home phones are wireless and electricity-dependent). After 20 to 30 minutes we finally get through to someone to tell them what they should already know. To summarise: Here in France, the country where customer service is considered a foreign and therefore repulsive concept, we pay out of pocket and out of patience every time we call for help.