French Customer Service: Pleasant Surprises

Week 17 in France 11/23-11/29/2025

Welcome to the 45th weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog. We are officially into our fourth month of full time living in France.

For all of our friends and family in the states we hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving Holiday. For everyone else, we hope you had a great week too. Not too much snow, I hope.

The weather forecast for this week is for a chance of rain every day. With highs just barely into the 50s F. No snow is forecasted though. Lows in the area are going to be in the freezing range.

For us this week has been mainly focused on “The Closing” and gathering things to make our new place ready to live in. There are a zillion little things needed from trash cans to a TV, silverware to pots and pans and bedding to bath towels. Then of course a few big things like a clothes dryer and the utilities and trash pickup. We have done all of this before, but this is our first time getting all this arranged in a foreign country in a new language with unknown rules and procedures. We are not too worried, a little stressed yes and excited for sure.

Our rough plan is to stay in the gite in Saint Germain de Confolens through December while we get set up in Chabanais. So, we will be driving back and forth and shopping for furnishings, loading totes and toting totes and arranging and rearranging the house. Luckily EB is a genius in this department.

It will take some time to get into the rhythm of our new village. It is all part of our adventure, and we will update you as we go and looking forward to this part of the adventure.

Things on the agenda this week:

• The closing and pick up the house keys
• Check out our new home and start moving stuff in.
• Shopping and shopping and more shopping
• Utilities, Phone and WiFi set up
• Review paperwork required for the driver’s license exchange and the Carte Vitale medical card applications
• Coordinate with French certified translator to translate our driver’s license and birth certificates

Why this Blog?

Long story short, we are a couple of “Baby Boomers” that have moved from Venice, Florida to the beautiful French countryside as retirees. After a little over a year of planning and fretting we sold everything and made the move on 1 August 2025.

We publish a brief update of this adventure every Sunday to share our experiences, tips and mistakes.

For starters, we have decided that the French countryside is where we want to make our home. Although we enjoyed our visit to Paris, our life is not in Paris. We like the peace and calm of village life that includes amenities of course. We will explain over the course of our blog posts.

If this is your first visit to our blog, WELCOME!

To all of our regulars, thanks for being here. It means a lot.

Thinking about a move to France? We are happy to share our thoughts and answer questions. Just drop a question in the comment section below and we will get back to you.

If you are wondering what got into our head and inspired us to make the move check out some of our earlier posts. Again, if you have questions about our adventure, drop your questions in the comment section below.

We are learning a lot about the French culture and lifestyle as we make our life here and each week, we include some thoughts on what we learn.

This Week in General

Home Owners Insurance

On Wednesday we went into Confolens to meet with an insurance agent to get the homeowners insurance set up. It is needed before you go to the closing. We met with an agent of AXA insurance and in about 30 minutes we were all set up. He spoke very good English and after a few questions about the area (square meters) of the house how many bedrooms (chambres) and bathrooms (salles de bain) and such we paid for a year and went home for a glass of wine and a game of Rummikub. Life is good.

EB and I left the insurance office pleasantly surprised at how quickly everything was arranged, and the customer service was great.

You might remember our auto insurance is with AXA. Although, our car insurance is currently with another agent of AXA, we will be transferring it over to the agent in Confolens so that they can help us with anything car or house related.

Yeah, We Closed On The House!

We Got up at O-Dark Thirty (7:00am) on Thursday morning, had our coffee and chocolatine, and drove to Chabanais to inspect the house one last time before going to Ruffec to sign the final documents and pick up the house keys.

As we expected the house was in good shape and ready for us to move in. Well ready except for the electricity, gas and water. The meter readings had to be taken before we sign on the bottom line.

The closing meeting went smoothly and after about an hour we were on our way. We went back to the house to drop off some stuff. It took us awhile to figure out the keys. It seems like every door has a lock.

Maybe I should call this set of keys a boat anchor. A few of the keys have an identification tag on them, in French. Those wild looking “skeleton” keys really work. Crazy, right?

I had to scrape ice off of the car windows on Thanksgiving morning before driving to Chabanais. I remember having to scrap the windows in Sarasota, Florida a few times. I will have to buy a scraper the next time we go shopping. I should have taken a picture, but Rosie was getting impatient. It’s all about Rosie.

We were able to set up electricity and gas accounts online. Since we had the meter readings, we didn’t have to wait for a technician to come to the house to do the readings. We typed in my email and my French phone number and Thursday night I had a call from the utility company Engie that all is good, and everything should be okay on Friday. We weren’t even a 100% sure the French phone number would work. Somehow all of the stars aligned just right.

We celebrated a little bit, and I mixed up some Aperol and Orange juice poured a bit into a couple of champagne flutes and added some Prosecco and viola a celebration! Life really is pretty simple if you let be.

Friday we made a couple of runs between St Germain de Confolens and Chabanais to move some more stuff into the house. It’s not like we have too much of course!

Saturday we did some more shopping at Darty. Darty is kind of like the US version of Best Buy but with a smaller selection, just like everything in France EXCEPT potato chips, they have a weird and wacky affinity for so many different flavor combinations. We will have to take a photo for you! We had heard that Darty has a good supply and pretty good prices on appliances. After doing some measurements at the house we purchased the clothes dryer and a TV. We had to be sure the dryer would fit through the doors. Everything will be delivered on December 4th between 10;00 and 16:00. We also bought a small “blue tooth” speaker.

Sunday EB spent time putting stuff away. My job was to figure out all of the keys. The previous owners had a few spares. Then we went through the guest bedroom and bathroom, then the dining room and took notes of additional furnishings needed. With all of that done we were able to take some time for a little walk around town with Rosie.

French Lifestyle and Culture

Pleasant Surprises:

We often hear how French customer service is slow and frustrating. I have to say customer service from the utility company is excellent so far.

• Home Owners Insurance
• Utilities

Homeowners Insurance

This is interesting as the agent was being very diplomatic when presenting the quote. He said for full coverage including upgrades the monthly premium would be X but we could save a little if we didn’t want any upgrades. The annual premium including upgrades is about 530 euros (about $630/year). We took the upgrades. A VERY PLEASANT SURPRISE

Utilities in Chabanais

I mentioned above that we signed up for the electricity and gas online. We received copies of the bill for the past year. Of course, it is in French, so it took us a little bit to figure out what the 5 pages of the statements were saying. We signed up for 3 years

We were pleasantly surprised at the estimated monthly cost.

• Electricity is estimated at 31.86 euros per month (about $37/mth) (but keep in mind that over 1/2 our house is on solar panels)
• Gas is estimated at 30.85 euros per month (about $36/mth)
• Water and wastewater treatment is estimated at 42 euros per month (about $49/mth)

So far so good, but as of Sunday there is still no power, gas or water supplied to the house. We are hoping all is activated by Wednesday. I guess you are supposed to sign up a month or at least a week ahead of time.

Time designation

Did I tell you that the French use the 24 hour clock to designate time (some people might call it “military” time) So, they don’t use AM and PM. Thus 10:00 AM is just 10:00 and 6:00 PM is 18:00. It takes a little time to get used to, but not a biggy.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

We have a few things to do next week:

• Meeting in Potiers regarding OFII documents (medical) on Tuesday
• Follow up appointment for Cable and phone service at Orange on Wednesday
• Purchase items for the guest bedroom and bathroom
• Be at house for clothes dryer and TV delivery on Thursday
• Follow up on Carte Vital paperwork (we had to have some documents translated to French by a certified French translator)
• Driver’s License follow up
• Explore Confolens city center
• Follow up Utilities

Signing off for the week

As always, we sign off wishing you all a good week and remind you to take care of yourselves and your family.

Keep in touch and leave questions, suggestions and comments below. We really enjoy hearing from you. Your kind and encouraging words remind us that we can do this.

A bientot (see you soon)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com