BMW France – you just lost my business. A few weeks ago my wife bought a new car. A BMW. Fine car. Superbly designed and tremendous quality. As a car, we are delighted with it.

Next year I’ll be replacing my car. I had my eye on a sparkling new BMW estate. But so long as I have to buy it from BMW France, it’s not going to happen. Shame, as I really do like the cars. I just can’t stand the company. In the short time we’ve had the new car I’ve had two major issues. Neither concern the quality of the car itself.

BMW France have a typical finance package for new cars: rental for 3 years, then option to purchase. And, like many of their competitors, sometimes they offer that with the extra attraction of a “No money down…” package. Fantastic. We’ll have that please. It’s then that the dealer starts to play games…

Gissus ya focking money

Now I admit that BMW France do not directly benefit (as far as I can tell) from the scam they operate. But I also have no doubt at all that it’s conducted with the full knowledge and connivance of HQ. They need a “deposit” to secure the order. Never mind the clearly printed terms & conditions from BMW. They want 10% of the full purchase price to proceed with the order.

Frankly I was about to walk away then, but since my wife was really keen on the car I kept quiet and paid the money, with the dealer solemnly promising me it gets returned on the very same day the car is delivered. Needless to say that’s a load of bullshit. They lie. They have no intention of returning the money than. It took two weeks of waiting and getting increasingly pissed with the dealer before the money comes back, and then with not a word of apology or explanation for the delay. Still, you can see the attraction for the BMW dealer: not only does he sell a car but he gets the customer to lend him a large lump of money, interest free, for a period of some weeks or months. Good scam.

Dear customer. Screw you.

OK. So the purchase was over. At least she can enjoy the car now? Disaster struck: after less than a month the car suffers a puncture. Bad luck. Hard to tell what did it, but we think it was some large-ish stones that had fallen on to the road. Now, a short detour: like many BMWs, this one has no spare tyre. Also, oddly, it does not have run-flat tyres either. It has a “temporary reinflation” kit to repair the type and get you home or to the nearest garage. Not wildly keen on that, but that’s life. Trouble was in this case that at least part of the tire damage was to the sidewall, kinda where it meets the bottom of the tire. That was clearly visible as damaged. Maybe more – who can tell? Anyway, you don’t try a temporary repair on a tyre with a suspect sidewall.

What to do? Well, we had no worries actually: when we bought the car we had asked about the lack of a spare wheel. “No problem” the dodgy dealer tells us, and he then showed us chapter and verse in the handbook that comes with the car. The BMW handbook assures you that if you suffer a puncture (or indeed any other sort of failure – but it singles out punctures for explicit mention) you are in good hands: just call the number given and all will be well. You’ll be rescued, helped, sorted out and generally taken care of.

Fantastic! So despite being still shaken up by the puncture, my wife (Woman. On her own. Unable to move her car.) calls the BMW care-line for help. Bottom line from BMW: “Go fuck yourself. Not our problem.” I paraphrase slightly – I don’t think they swore. The operator asked for details of the puncture. My wife is a helpful sort and describes it accurately, how the tyre is completely flat and how she can see damage to the sidewall as well. “Oh well, that’s not a puncture. That’s an *accident*. Speak to your insurance company about it. Goodbye.”

It would be funny if it wasn’t true. “That’s not a puncture. That’s an accident.” I am still unable to tell anyone what sort of puncture is NOT an accident. Presumably one you do on purpose?

Hello Audi, Hello Mercedes. Hello anyone but BMW.

So there we have it. My wife has a tremendous car, which she enjoys very much. Maybe you might buy one too? If you’re in France, good luck to you. You are expected to make an interest-free loan of an indefinite period to the dealer before you even get your car. And once you’ve got it the after-care you were promised is just non-existent. They’ve got your money and don’t give a flying shit about you anymore.

When I go car shopping for my new car in a few months time I’ll be anywhere but at the local BMW dealer. Maybe the others are just as bad? Well, we’ll see. They sure couldn’t be a lot worse. You conned me once BMW France. You won’t get a second chance.

I was even, ironically, signed up as one of their Premium Customers, which ensured they got even MORE business out of me!

I liked their prices – not always cheapest, but close enough.

I liked their web-site.

I liked their customer service – when something “went wrong” they would sort it out. It has to be said, though, that my experience of Amazon’s customer service is more based upon dealing with Amazon UK in times past, not so much with Amazon France.

So I was a keen customer and advocate, and spent oodles of money with Amazon. So how come today I cancel my Premium account and, once my final orders have limped in some time next week, will cancel my whole account and never, ever, darken their web site again?

Things go wrong… I know

I work in customer service, albeit of a rather different type. Things go wrong. People make mistakes. Stuff fails. That’s why customer service exists – to sort it out and make things good again.

Amazon France, though, seem to take a rather different view. It appears that their view of customer service is to tell me why I am wrong, to ignore the bits where it’s clear that they are wrong and to generally drop dead before saying “Hey sorry! We screwed up – this is what we’re doing to fix it!”

This post is not the place to bore anyone with the minutiae. But this week I had reason to contact Amazon France’s customer service regarding three separate orders (see what I mean about a good customer!! Three orders on the go at once!)

Most of the issues were within their direct control.

What do I expect? I expect to be listened to. To be understood. To, if appropriate, receive an apology. To be told what action is being taken to rectify things. Simple stuff. Customer Service 101.

What do I get? Evasion. Defensiveness. Lack of rectifying action. No apology.

Based upon my recent experience, Amazon France treat their customers like fools. They will push back on things they think they can push back on, and simply ignore any things which are indefensible.

Amazon France has lied to me (and I don’t use the word “lie” lightly). It has treated me like an idiot. It doesn’t care about me.

We won’t meet again

Time to explore the alternatives. Books? I’ll see what FNAC are like these days. Photographic equipment? I used Miss Numerique once or twice. Time to go back. Toys? King Jouet here I come! And so on. I’m actually rather looking forward to it.

It was nice having it all consolidated under Amazon before. But all things must come to an end. Treat your customer like dirt and what can you expect?

We arrive at the Antibes Tribunal at the designated time. Here’s where things differed from my knowledge of the British Small Claims Court. I expected that the time we had been told to arrive would be the appointment for our case, and we’d all sit in a small office, us, the other solicitor and the judge, and everything would be discussed over a desk, and agreement reached.

Oh no. Not at all. No no no…

At the appointed time there are about two hundred other people milling around the court entrance. About one third were lawyers (identifiable by their daft attire) and the rest bewildered looking civilians such as us. Turns out everyone on that day is given the same appointment time.

On the door of the court is pinned a document with the running order of the afternoon’s hearing. Several hundred cases to be heard, and us listed as about number 75 or so.

After a scrum to read that document, we all gradually drift into the main court-room (drift, since no one is reall sure what to do, and there sure isn’t any one there to help or advise)

Court

The court is disconcertingly reminiscient of a school-room. Rows of rough wooden benches for “us”, and a huge imposing (but still rather tatty) bench at the front for The Judge.

For about 15 minutes or so nothing much happens, and then The Judge arrives. We all stand up upon his entrance (yup, we are back at school) and he sits down and so do we. Immediately striking is his lack of daft legal dress. Normal looking, in just an open-neck shirt, but with the most imposing bling-bling medallion I’ve ever seen. We’re 75, so I suppose we need to sit and watch 74 others first…

One law for us, another for them

It quickly becomes apparent that the running order pinned to the door is not the real running order. Takes a little while to work out just what is going on – cases seem to get called in a random order. However after a while the penny drops: the number of lawyers in the court is gradually thinning out. Irrespective of the list, where a lawyer is present to represent one or other party in a case, the cases seem to magically float to the top of the queue. For the first time I am almost grateful that out adverseries had employed a local lawyer to represent them.

After about 40 minutes or so we get called.

Stand and deliver

No privacy. No frendly across-the-desk meeting. You’re called up to the bench, you on one side, with the other person’s lawyer, and the judge peering down at you from the other. And thus the interrogation beings, with several dozen other pairs of ears all straining to listen in!

I found this quite intimidating. Most others would too. The judge runs through the case and asks both parties to say what they want to say. He then tells you to expect judgement on a date which was about two months hence.

Done!

It took us about 10 minutes or so, and then we leave and just hope we’ve done ourselves justice (pun intended). Comparing with the British equivalent, the court appearence itself is much more confrontational and intimidating. But on a positive note, the judge does not deliver instant judgement. He instead goes off to read through the case (and the papers presented) in considerable detail before giving a verdict. Thus even if your Perry Mason impression on the day ain’t that great, if your paperwork is good, you’re still in with a shout.

Judgement Day

And so the day comes. The court sends the judgement to you and you open it with apprehension. Nearly three pages of legal reasoning was given by the judge, before getting to the important part where he awards us the refund of our money. There was a deduction for one small item we had claimed, but the main part was payable. Fantastic! He even awarded about 2.5 years interest.

Within the stipulated period, the other party’s lawyer forwarded us a cheque for the awarded amount. But without the interest payable. They really do try it on. However with a court order behind us we were more than prepared to nail them for every last cent they owed. Another letter to their lawyer indicating the amount of interest owed and an implicit threat to reclaim it via a court baileff if required, and the remaining money eventually arrives.

Would I do it again?

Hell yes. Invoking the legal system even in your native country can be intimidating. In a “foreign” country where your command of the language and law is less then perfect, it is doubly intimidating. But then I can’t help but suppose that this is exactly what the people who try and rip you off also suppose: that you won’t bother.

I have only my very limited experience to go on, but based upon that I would urge other tenants in France who are victims of the Deposit Rip-Off to stand up and fight. The laws exist to help you, you just need to invoke them.

Drop me a line if you need more encouragement!

In this article I will describe how I set about recovering the money in France. I will occasionally compare and contrast with how these sorts of things happen in Britain. Now I’m not one of those whinging Brits who bangs on about how “we” do it and how badly “they” do it!! I merely offer the comparisons as a point of reference which may or may not clarify things.

In summary, while the British system and the French system used in such cases are somewhat different in the details, I’d suggest that the overall effectiveness of them is very similar – so I’m not raging against either one.

So read on for how to do it…

Where to start?

I’m a foreigner in France. My knowledge of the legal system is negligible. My spoken French is passable but by no means good, and my written French is dreadful. So I immediately go to a local solicitor and say “Here’s the facts, go get my money please”

He at least agrees that I’ve got a case and agrees to write the obligatory Lawyer’s Letter to the property rental agency. He also suggests that it’s very likely that in response the agent (and landlord, who is obviously in the loop behind the agent) will offer a settlement and, assuming it’s at all sensible, I will take it and it’ll have cost me the price of his letter. He also advised, however, that in the event of no settlement being forthcoming, the cost of taking it to court (i.e. his bill!) might not be justified. Hmmmm.

That sounded promising, though, so off goes the letter to the agent. We wait many months and hear nothing from anyone.

It turns out that the agent had in fact replied fairly quickly to the lawyer’s letter, saying, essentially, “No”. But our lawyer had rather fallen asleep on the job and failed to contact us. Things dragged on a bit, but eventually we discover that now our tardy lawyer has left the law firm completely and we’re (almost) back to square one. This interlude actually took the best part of one year, and at the end of it all we picked up the entire file from the law firm and were advised that the best way to proceed was actually to use the French equivalent of what in Britain is called the Small Claims Court. In France the equivalent is called Le Tribunal d’Instance. Google away for countless links, but here’s a starting point.

It’s worth pointing out at this stage that in the end, having had a lawyer’s professional advice and a detailed letter setting out precisely what we were asking for, in perfect French legal-speak, was extremely useful anyway. The fact that we then went solo without a lawyer was, I think, substantially helped by that initial formal correspondence being on file. But I get ahead of myself…

After looking into it it sounded feasible, if a little scary (for a “foreigner”) so I duly started out. It’s fair to say that I have a French spouse who is obviously much more capable than I of making phone calls and writing letters in French! So I would advise anyone else embarking on this to have a French friend (or spouse!) available, if only to check letters before sending them. And to help with the odd telephone call. However I must emphasise that the whole procedure does NOT require great expertise in elegant high-brow French, I assure you. Most of the forms and correspondence can be reduced to a few sentences and plenty of lists and bullet points.

Le Tribunal d’Instance

We contacted the Court d’Instance in the town where we had been living (Antibes) and they gave us the (simple) forms to fill in and a brief explanation of the procedure to follow.

Here a brief diversion into a comparison with the British Small Claims Court process: the aim of the British system was to provide a legal recourse for common civil disputes which was accessible. Now accessibility means several things in such context. Firstly, it means “cheap” – we all know that expensive legal fees can be a barrier to justice. If I want to recover E500, I don’t want to pay all of that (and more) to a lawyer on the off-chance that I win. The second aspect of accessibility, for me, means for the common man. The legal system is famously daunting and complex, and the Small Claims procedure is designed so that any averagely educated person with no specific legal knowledge can put their case before a court, without fear of being either bamboozled by the law nor fearful of the act itself.

The French Court d’Instance is, I assume, designed to achieve similar aims. I’ll say now that is succeeds, with one slight exception which I’ll come to later!

Who to sue?

To date, all of our dealings had been with the letting agency. However to issue a claim in the court it’s important that you ensure you are suing the right person. Take out the tenancy agreement you signed all those months or years ago before moving in, and the name of the other party will be there in plain sight. And it’s unlikely to be the agency, but rather the property owner. They are the ones you must name as the “other party”.

(Now as it happens we already knew this, and, prior to going to court, had written directly to the owners advising them that we were unhappy with how their agent was acting and indicating that court was imminent if payment was not forthcoming. They didn’t want to know. Hoever it’s orth doing, if only to show later you really did try and avoid litigation)

Paperwork

So the forms get filled in. Apart from supplying the names and so on regarding the two parties, most of the form you complete is a blank box where you describe what you are after and why. On the principle of simple-is-best, I wrote (in French, of course…) just a couple of sentences explaining that an amount of 516 Euros due to us from our rental deposit had not been paid, nor the deduction justified. No argument, no clever explanation from me – just a simple statement of fact.

The other, in many ways much more important, item you complete at this stage is a complete list of all documents you will submit to support your claim. You do not submit the documents yet, but you do need to identify them. You must make sure you cover everything here. I think my list ran to about 14 items or so. Item 1 was the original tenancy agreement, Item 2 the original état des lieux, then we’re on to letters from the agent, photocopies of the cheque, letter from my solicitor, agent’s response, etc. etc. Too much is better than too little here (although don’t get silly…)

In due course you will be required to send copies of all these documents to your adversary and, if it goes to a court hearing, to give the originals (where appropriate) of all of them to the judge. So make sure your filing system is in good order. And that the documents actually exist.

This submission then gets sent off to the local Tribunal d’Instance and, shortly afterwards, they tell you of the date and time for your appearance at court. They also tell you that, as of now, you need to send a copy of all the documents you have listed as being submitted to the court also to your adversary. Do it, and make sure it’s by recorded delivery with proof of delivery.

Our day in court is imminent!

I was actually pretty confident that within a short while of receiving the full dossier, and realising that we were serious, the property owners would agree to settle.

They did not. In fact about two weeks before the appointed date we receive a letter from their solicitor (of whom nothing had been heard until that point) informing us that he was acting on their behalf, and asking us to send him a copy of all the documents we were submitting. I wrote back and told him to ask his client for them, as they had already been supplied. I had no obligation to send two sets of documents out, and had no intention of doing so.

And so to court… in Part 4!

Now let’s jump ahead several months or years, to the point at which you leave the property, and the Great French Rental Rip-Off starts…

Previously I mentioned that some (many?) tenants will serve their notice to the landlords as required and stop paying rent, so that the rent comes out of the caution (deposit). I also mentioned that there are pros and cons to that, but it’s ultimately your choice. Here I will relate what happened to me, where I decided to be “legal” and pay my rent correctly up until the point of departure.

Who’s afraid of an Etat des Lieux?

In my case I knew we had a comprehensive and complete état des lieux when we moved in, as it was performed by a huissier (in English the best translation I can think of for that is bailiff, but a huissier does all sorts of things in addition to those duties performed by a bailiff) The reason that the huissier had performed the état des lieux was due to the previous tenant refusing to agree on a normal état des lieux with the landlord’s agent. Maybe that should have rung alarm bells in my head! When a huissier performs the état des lieux it is considered as neutral and impartial (and probably is) and forms both the état des lieux for the outgoing tenant and for the incoming one (me).

So, three years after moving in we gather to complete the état des lieux for departure. The house has been completely emptied and we’ve cleaned everything. The agent himself was not available that day, so had subcontracted the état des lieux to another company who did such things. The lady doing this was pleasant and all went well. She recorded the state of things very accurately and completely, and I was happy to sign it.

The landlord has, normally, two months to return your deposit after departure. This period is to allow him to notify you of any issues that require addressing and for you and he to discuss them.

For the two month period we heard absolutely nothing from the agent. I took this to be a good sign – since he was not a shadowy one-man operator, but runs a large agency in Antibes (Yes, I’m talking about you, Labau Immobilier – you idiots) I knew the money was safe and, since no dispute had been notified, would be returned after the two month permitted period.

The rip-off begins

Two months pass and nothing comes. I write them a letter and they have the immense good grace to reply after a while, enclosing a cheque for 752 Euros, and photocopies of bills for items deducted. What items? Cleaning the chimney and redecorating the entire hallway… They had thus deducted an amount of 516 Euros. (In a pathetic attempt to make it look like they had written before the two month period the letter was dated some weeks previously, however since they are really not as bright as they seem to think, the cheque was dated correctly, and thus showed that they had not paid within two months.)

Horrified by the deductions I of course immediately went back to the état des lieux to see what on earth had triggered a complete redecoration of the hall. The copy of the bill they sent me lovingly detailed the re-plastering and repainting that had been required for the full area of the hall, so I expected something pretty major. The only thing I could find in the outgoing état des lieux was this: “un eclat de crepi”. (English: small chip in the plaster) In actual fact the hall wall was cracked from nearly top to bottom where the house had obviously moved a little, so a small “chip” being noted was almost certainly true!

And so in the best traditions of rental here, I can only assume the agent had spoken with the owners and assured them that they could try it on and get the whole tatty, shoddy hallway redecorated and get the idiot tenant to foot the bill.

Who pays what?

Now at this point I need to yet again remind the reader that I am not any sort of expert in this field – I can only relate my moderate understanding of the rules and regulations, which may be incomplete or misleading. The law here states that when apportioning blame (and hence cost) to a tenant in such a situation there are various rules to follow.

First rule: Is it even the tenant’s fault? Obviously if the damage recorded is not due to negligence by the tenant then the landlord has a weak case for charging for it!

Second rule: If it is due to the tenant then the cost of fixing it will not necessarily fall in its entirety on the tenant – it will depend upon the original state of the property as per the état des lieux when moving in.

For example: say I had engraved my name in 2-inch high letters on the wall of the hall. Any reasonable person would conclude that this is “my fault”. If the original état des lieux had also recorded the hall as having been in perfect or near perfect condition when we moved in, then I’m going to cop the full cost of repair. Which seems fair.

However if the original état des lieux had noted that the hall was tatty, had not been painted in years, full of cracks in the plaster, and so on, then even my blatant additional damage would not fall solely upon me. The law reasonably states that if the landlord is going to end up with a brand-spanking redecorated hallway, then I should only pay a portion of that if it was not in that state to start with. You’d need to speak with a lawyer to get the exact details and how the sliding scales work, but that’s the general principle.

So in my case, having had our hallway recorded as crap when we moved in, then due to a chip in the plaster getting a bill for 516 bucks 3 years later, I was kinda peeved.

Wrote the Labau Immobilier and told them so. They wrote back politely telling me to go away.

At this point in the standard rip-off the tenant dance, the tenant is meant to roll-over and wave his legs in the air. I did not. See part 3…

One important disclaimer up front: I am not a lawyer, and none of this should be taken as formal legal advice. All I will do is relate my experiences and thoughts. And if they give you some ideas or pointers, great, but check with others too!

(parts 2, 3 and 4 are here, here and here)

The game of “Screw the tenant”

While living in France, I’ve lived in three different rented properties. And I’ve known a lot of other people who also live in rented accommodation – everything from tiny studio flats to large villas, the property rental market in France is very active.

The laws regarding property rental as, as you might expect, well developed and designed to protect both landlord and tenant. However the law is one thing, reality is another.

One area, though, which appears to be an entirely routine and predictable battle-ground is the return of the tenant’s deposit (or caution) at the end of the tenancy.

While not wishing to tar all landlords with the same brush, based upon personal experience and many conversations with others, it is almost standard procedure to try and pay the tenant back just as little of that deposit as possible.

The landlord’s standard mechanism for doing that is to show that the property has been damaged in various ways and thus requires repair, the cost to be taken out of the deposit.

The tenant’s standard mechanism for avoiding this is to not pay the rent for the last two or three months (depending upon whether the deposit paid was originally equal to two or three months) and have the landlord instead use the deposit money as the rent.

Should I pay or not?

Well, of course that’s up to you! But you must remember that if you do not pay your rent up until the point of departure, but instead force the landlord to use the deposit instead, you are breaching the terms of your rental agreement (assuming any vaguely normal such agreement) and thus taking a gamble.

On the one hand you make sure that the landlord cannot withhold your deposit, since it’s all gone to pay the rent anyway. That’s good. But in the event of any subsequent legal dispute between you and the landlord, you’ve hardly a leg to stand on: you flagrantly breached the tenancy agreement, which will be greatly frowned upon!

So let us assume that you decide to be a legal and honest tenant, and pay the rental right up until the end. And the landlord then decides to try and rip you off. What happens then? Well, let me relate what happened to me, and how I fought and won!

The état des lieux

First, let us go off on a little diversion about the (in) famous état des lieux. It’s critical to understand what it’s all about, since it is fundamental to the rip-off scheme used on tenants.

The Internet is full of detailed advice on the état des lieux, so you can Google for it yourself… But just to deal with the key concepts as they matter to us here. The purpose of that document is to FULLY detail the state of the property you are renting when you take occupancy. Then again, at the end, to FULLY detail the property’s state. Any differences between the two then becomes subject of debate as to who, if anyone, is responsible for it… And the game thus begins.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to make sure that the état des lieux when you move in is HUGELY detailed. Any defect, however trivial, should be documented. For example, there is a slightly cracked tile in the bathroom. Make sure you document it! Or, three years later, you might end up paying for the ENTIRE bathroom to be re-tiled… So write it down. And when the landlord or agent assures you that such details don’t matter, insist. Believe me, they know full well how important it is. Even from day-one, you will be tempted to lay the foundations for your own downfall later on!

Record not just the obvious defects, but also the general state of things too. If the walls are shabby and obviously have not been painted in 5 years, get it noted. Remind the landlord that such a record dos not oblige him to do anything – it just records how things are. And take some photos too. They need not form a formal part of the état des lieux, but they are very powerful when whipped out 3 years later to show how things were! Oh, and remember and try to “accidentally” include the landlord in one of them also – so when their provenance is questioned you can close that discussion down quickly.

Also remember that you have a period after moving in to add things you did not notice previously. Follow the procedures and get them added before it’s too late.

Finally, if in any doubt, employ someone to do the état des lieux with the landlord on your behalf. Best choice? Pay a property agent not connected with your tenancy. Set a thief to catch a thief, and all that…

The next article in this series will relate my personal experiences in getting ripped off, but also how I used the legal system to fight back.