APRIL 4, MONDAY AND TUESDAY

AMAZON BASICS 2

I recounted the beginning of my story about ordering a deck chair for Susie to sleep on a couple of days ago. She needed it to sleep because she had a comression fracture in her L3 vertabrae. I had seen in Swannanoa that all I had to do was to order from Amazon the same chair we had ordered in Swannanoa, which took a couple of minutes to order and then another minute to take it into the house when delivered. What could be easier. Andretti this trend out to be a major cross cultural experience for me.

As I wrote, I ordered it first on the French Amazon page where instead of costing $50, as it did in North Carolina, it cost $250 but I bit the bullet and did it. Then I discovered that the difference in price was from having it delivered to Swannanoa from France by expedited mail. I cancelled it. Then I ordered it on the American site with the my French address. Still $250. I ordered it and then discovered that I was now ordering it from the United States to be delivered in France. I cancelled it again. The third time I ordered it on the French page to the French address and it was $50, free delivery on Amazon Prime.

But I was still worried that they wouldn‘t be able to deliver it to my 3rd floor apartment past two locked doors on the ground floor. So I ordered two smaller things, a French Press and a heater for a coffee cup as a trial run to see how Amazon worked before ordering the chair. They came on Saturday. I got a phone call which Apple identified as spam, another car warranty offer I was sure, an offer I get almost daily in Swannanoa. I nixed it. Immediately there was a second call and then I realized that Apple would think all calls from France to Swannonoa, where it thought my phone was, were spam. I looked out the window and there far below me was a man holding an Amazon box. I quickly, or quickly for me, raced down. At this point he had used the code that I had sent to get past the first door and was deciding what to do. Not only did I get the packages but I now knew what to look for on Monday when the chair would come.

I was ready on Monday, expecting the Amazon delivery at the same time, 2:30. But at 12:30 I got a message in French saying that my delivery instructions were imperfect and that the package could not be delivered. By the time I translated this through Google translate the guy (if he ever came) was gone. I spent three hours after lunch trying to decipher the Amazon web page only to discover that Amazon, as they do in the United States also deliver through the mail and in five or six other ways. It was Chronopost that was delivering my chair. I finally figured this out and found the Chronopost website. It had a number to call for queries. I pushed the link, the number in blue, and was told by an American voice that the number I was dialing was incorrect. I then realized that I was in Paris but my phone was in Swannanoa and the there was a problem with either the country code or the city code. I tried every option. The same voice every time told me that the number was incorrect and to dial 611. Finally I dialed 611 and got a T-Mobile help line that told me how much the appreciated my call and my business. After cycling through a number of options, none of which were apropos, got a pleasant woman who did some research and told me to put 011 ahead of the number. I did. The same man told me it was incorrect. I called 611 again, this time hitting 0 continually to avoid getting caught in the automatic reply loop and asked for a tech person. I think this second woman was in the Phillipines. She couldn‘t figure it out but told me to leave out one zero of the city code. She was very nice and said she would call back in a half an hour to check that I had gotten through (she didn‘t). This time with 011, no + sign and no 0, I got through. I asked in English for someone who could speak English. The pleasant woman who answered forwarded my call and the music played for about five minutes and the stopped. I for waited five minutes, saying hello again and again, and then hung up. I dialed the correct number again, asked for an English speaker and was forwarded, the music went off after five minutes. So I tried again using Facetime audio as if this would make a difference. It did. This time I got a person in the International section who spoke English. But because of either a poor connection or because his English was English pronounced as if it were French, we could barely understand each other. My questions went over his shoulder, his went over mine. I thought he was saying my address was 18 Rue de Yvonne Lac, and I kept correcting him. He was trying to get me to go to 18 Rue Germain Eilon to pick up my package the next day. He carefully spelled it out for me. Go in the morning, he said.

But there was no Rue Germain Eilon on Google, but there was a Rue Germain Pilon, and it was not far away. So Monday afternoon I went there on the off chance that the package would already be dropped back off. But when I got to 18 Rue Germain Pilon there was no sign of a post office of any kind, only a nondescript grocery store. I went home confused.

But when I looked up Alimentation Generales, the name of the grocery store, it occurred to me that it might also be a package delivery point. So at 8:30 Tuesday I went there filled with hope. They were closed. I looked on line again and found their hours. They opened at 10. I went at ten. The the owner was there at a desk in front. The post opened at 11 he said. So I came back at 11 and the same guy, who could have just as easily looked for the package an hour earlier searched on his little device and said that the package was not there. When he saw my distress and when I begged him to call, Chronopost to see where it was, since my French was non existent, he did call someone. Your package will maybe come in three days, he said, better yet, why don’t you come back next week. Where he had been brusque before he now smiled. I didn’t know if he was playing with me or being helpful.

So I came home, dissatisfied. I needed the package before Susie comes on Sunday. I looked at the web page again and this time discovered that whenever I greyed out a paragraph or two on the page, the word translate appeared above the block and when I hit translate the block was instantly turned into quite passable English. (I learned just at the very end of my search that I could have turned the whole website into English, but I had been so sure that it was incomprehensible to me that I didn’t notice.). But even in English I couldn’t tell what was going on until finally I came across another address where my package might be, on Rue de Clingincourt. I looked this up on Google maps and it was only an 8 minute walk away and on the level. I decided to take a wild chance, I‘d given up hope but needed a walk, and see if my package was there. Since it was a rather large and heavy box I was going to bring back, I took my empty carry on bag with wheels along, hoping to balance the box on top of it and roll it along instead of carrying it. When I got to the address it was another hole in the wall with a Chronopost driver just making a delivery. And suddenly I realized that the French post office was being run through innumerable nondescript hole in the wall stores. This one was a small place selling knick knacks and souvenirs. There were boxes in the aisles. After a long search the guy running the place found mine when I pointed out that the box in front of me was the size he should look for. It was mine. He was relieved to get it out of there. He thanked me profusely, I thanked him profusely and then tried to figure out how to balance the box on top of my carry on case. I cut a hole in the box so that I could hold the box and the handle at the same time. I tried pulling it and my wrist hurt immediately. So I tried pushing it and this did work except that I had trouble steering and the box, cross wise, filled the sidewalk as I zigzagged along, side swiping things, with people stepping into the gutter to let me through. I finally got to my building and then went up the 45 stairs, lift and drop, thud, two steps at a time and after fifteen minutes reached my Airbnb and then figuring that my exertions had been the equivalent of shoveling snow, the cause of many an old man’s heart attack, I opened the box, unfolded the chair and fell asleep on it for an hour.

I calculate that my Amazon Prime Basics order consumed one full day 8 or ten hours of my time in Paris. But ordering from French Amazon was certainly a cross cultural experience, as intense as any other experience I could have sought out and one that I will remember.