French Bureaucracy and Phone Numbers
Bureaucracy In my (admittedly limited) experience, I have to say I think French bureaucracy gets a bad rap. Our key areas of exposure to French administrative processes to date have been: The house purchase (immobilier and notaire) Banking (CA/Britline) Electric (EDF) Water (SUEZ) Working with all of these has required admin processes to be followed as you would expect but, in large, they have gone smoothly - and I would suggest that (other the natural challenges arising from a foreign language) they have gone at least as smoothly as would have been the case if we were dealing with UK institutions. For instance, the house purchase from accepted offer to getting possession took less than 11 weeks. Even the language barrier was (largely) broken down by having a notaire with excellent English and using Britline (CA's banking division tailored for British ex-pats) and EDF's English speaking service. The only real challenges we have had have been get