I can't say I hadn't be warned. Better still, I should have remembered. Yet I am still raging about having beaten to the post by an anonymous buyer in registering a domain's name solely because of sheer incompetence and the legendary French laissez-faire.
Being happy with the service and products of the British company I use for my website I approached their French branch to buy the name of the domain. When I did so in the past all it took was five minutes and my credit card number and within 24 hours my website was up and running. I assumed things on the French side wouldn't be that different. Que nenni!
Fox and I were already gutted to have missed on the opportunity to buy our village's name with the .com address and after seeing what our neighbours had done with it we couldn't afford to lose out on the .fr address, which was still available, if we hoped to attract any visitors. Besides spelling and grammatical mistakes, they describe our lovely village, and I quote, as being "quiet and very much asleep. Nothing happens. If you are looking for a quiet life, L. is the place to live". Now, I don't want to be bitchy but we do hope to run a business and after reading this the only thing I could think about was damage control.
So it is gripped by a sense of urgency that I went on registering the domain. After filling in the usual name, address, email, etc, and keying the credit card number I was expecting a confirmation email and to be able to start repairing the bad publicity. But no. Instead I got an email telling me they were aware of my wishes and will need to call me to confirm my identity to help them in their fight against fraudsters before the registration could be finalised. It was a Saturday and this being France, they were closed.
The phone call never came but on Tuesday I got an email asking me to fax my passport and proof of address. I tried, tried and tried again but it was constantly engaged. By the end of the day and after a furious exchange of emails between their security department and me and yet another invalid number we were no nearer finalising the registration. Fox tried again the following day, to no avail. They must have sensed my growing irritation and my patience diminishing for I received an email confirming the registration which was odd since they didn't have the evidence they requested. It wasn't odd anymore when within hours another email followed informing me they couldn't proceed. Someone had beaten me to the post.
To say that I was blue in the face will be as much as an understatement as calling the Italian rugby team useless in the 6 nations tournament. The poor young girl who picked up the phone to receive my wrath was only saved by my inability to remember how to bitch politely in French. But she got my drift. I could have cried when she told me the guy who bought the .fr address did so a mere two hours before one of their idiots sent me the phony confirmation email, and four days after I placed the original request for registration.
In the end I closed my account with them and bought the .net address with the UK branch. I console myself in the knowledge that having been beaten twice to the post has only fueled my competitiveness and determination to put our village on the map. But I must admit being intrigued by all the sudden interest our little village has generated within only a few days.
As for resigning myself to the French way of doing things, I'm not quite there yet.
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