France: Is La Poste a problem?

Not that we’ve been expecting a deluge of correspondence since moving here, but after 7 weeks it was starting to feel like maybe their was a problem with receiving our post.

We’d had some in the early days, including a batch from the UK of everything we’d received at Tolpuddle since escaping leaving our old house, but there were some important items we knew had been sent to us, such as:

• a chequebook for our French bank account erroneously send to our old address and forwarded from the UK
• another checkbook but this time sent to us directly
• a nice new label for our postbox showing our names to help La Poste (the irony of this wasn’t lost on us)
• a new appointment letter from the hospital
• the registration document for our car to enable us to finally make it French

The last of these was the most important really, as failing to fully register the car could open us up to a 30% customs charge. In addition, our French car insurance had been agreed on the car VIN to date on the basis we were taking measures to secure French registration.

So let’s take a step back and examine this august institution known as La Poste.

What is La Poste?

La Poste is the 100% state-owned postal service (take THAT, Royal Mail!) which dates back to 1477. Unlike Royal Mail, the retail (front of house) service is all part of the delivery network, meaning your local post office really is your local post office rather than being a franchise or agency operation.

Given the rural nature of much of France, the density of post offices is greater than the UK (about 0.25/1,000 pop compared with 0.17 in the UK). In fact France has an aménagement du territoire requiring that 90% of the population live within 5 km or a 20-minute drive of a La Poste service point.

Certainly where we are we can see that density in action. We have a small local office in Eguisheim and then two more larger ones in the two nearest village to us.

Another big difference is the rule for letterboxes (or, actually, postboxes since these are located at the roadside):

• the internal usable dimensions must be big enough to ensure an A4 envelope can fit inside
• the slot must measure at least 235 mm wide by 24 mm high
• individual postboxes must accommodate a standardized PTT barrel lock to allow the mail carrier to open the entire front face of the box using a universal passkey to place small parcels inside. (This really threw us with how Amazon deliveries got in there initially!)
• the occupant’s name(s) must be clearly displayed in the label holder on the front

The service also has an online/mobile app service which does all the things Royal Mail does, but also offers the ability to upload and post a registered letter, provides an unique ID for government services and has an online digital storage ‘vault’ for things like utility bills and payslips.

So….what’s the problem?

Well, I think some of those original letters from 1477 may still be in transit..

Let’s just say the speed and reliability of La Poste isn’t its strength. The tracking capability provided by the online service was showing two of our items still in transit after weeks.

I started to wonder how widespread a problem this was so I posted an item on Reddit to see what others thought, and if they had any suggestions on what to do.

These boiled down to:

• yes, there are delays and things get lost too
• make sure your postbox is well labelled
• try sending a test mail to your address

and most importantly…

• discuss with your local post office; it could be a local issue

Rachel headed in to the local post office armed with a printout showing the status of the tracked parcels in transit. They looked at their system and agreed. However, when she checked online later that afternoon suddenly the car registration documents were shown as having been delivered some days ago!

To say this cause an upset would be an understatement. If you’ve been following the blog you’ll know how much effort has gone in to importing the car.

There was a slight local complication I hadn’t mentioned - our property has three mailboxes; ours, the gîte and the legal entity that runs the gîte. And, as you’ll have spotted above, we didn’t yet have that lovely engraved label with our names on, just a bit of paper stuck on temporarily.

So was it La Poste? Was it an issue with our local postbox(es)? Or was it something else.

Taking action

Rachel fired off an online complaint to La Poste. Neither of us thought that this would bear fruit, but it felt like a necessary first step.

We then juggled the prospect of discussing with the car registration service (ANTS) or the number plate provision service (ePlaque) since these were both integral to the delivery process. But in the end we parked it as we had our friend Tim dropping by for the day on his cross-Europe travels.

When we got back from a trip out with Tim in the car WE HAD MAIL! However, not those tracked items we were really waiting for.

The next morning Rachel had a call from La Poste in which they acknowledged there had been a problem (taking note, Royal Mail?) and said they’d send an email to clarify. This essentially promised that the missing items would be delivered that afternoon. And they were delivered!

So the new label is on the postbox and now we are eagerly awaiting our French car number plates.