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This page was last updated 20 January 2008. | |
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| France: Banks, Credit Cards, The Euro | ||
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The Euro
BanksIf you are used to Nordic, or even British, banking service, then you are likely to be sadly disappointed with the quality of customer service and facilities and prices in French banks. Let me start with a simple example: A client of mine asked his Crédit Agricole branch to pay my invoice for 120 €, and the bank confirmed to him and me by e-mail on the 11 December 2006. The invoice listed all required details for making a bank transfer. No payment was received, and I e-mailed them about three reminders between Christmas and New Year. They did not answer. Finally, some days after New Year, they woke up and confirmed that the transfer had been done - after the client had asked them to cancel it, because he had in the meantime ordered a home banking transfer by Internet between our Danish accounts. The payment was credited on the 8th of January, or 18 banking days after they confirmed they would pay the invoice. As you can see from this example, taking holidays, eating and drinking is very important in France. Business and clients can wait. Of course, if you owed the bank money, they would obviously have applied their most severe sanctions already after a few days. Where Nordic banks typically provide a full range of Internet based home banking services, including the possibility of ordering domestic and international transfers, French banks are lagging severely behind and if they provide any transfer capability at all, it is limited to domestic transfers in the vast majority of cases. In many cases, like for example the Banque Postale, you can only order transfers to French accounts for which you have previously sent a letter of authorisation to your bank. You cannot enter the account number yourself. In certain cases, again like the Banque Postale, the only way to order an international transfer is to post a signed order to the bank, adding a few days to the duration of the transfer. When it comes to fees, French banks typically charge you a fee to access their limited and old-fashioned home banking service, whereas it is typically free in the UK and the Nordic countries. International debit and credit cards, and even the national payment card carte bleue, are very expensive compared with other countries, costing about 40 € a year and upwards for the most basic national payment card, where they are either free or cost very little in other countries. Cancelling a direct debit is charged from 12 € and upwards, whereas it is free elsewhere. A rejected direct debit (for lack of funds for example) will be charged from 8 € and upwards. Watch out for their list of other fees, such as account closure fees meant to discourage you from moving to another bank. The so-called customer advisors in the banks have targets for how many additional services they must sell, and they therefore try to make you buy more expensive services than what you need. You cannot count on getting exact information, as they will try to pretend that you can only obtain certain services, such as an authorised overdraft facility, by subscribing to a pack of bundled services, whereas it is quite clear from regulation that it must be possible to buy each service separately. Their next argument will be that the bundled pack is cheaper than buying each service separately. That may well be true, but the point is that most bank customers don't use all the included services. For many, it would have been cheaper to pay just the services they use. Direct debit: Beware! There is a major difference between France and other countries in the way direct debit works. In other countries, you normally give the bank authorisation to pay demands from certain companies. If you don't want to pay this way any more, you simply tell your bank to revoke the authorisation. In France, you give the authorisation to the company that is to be paid, and with that authorisation, they can debit what they like on your account. The bank does not have a list of authorisations. Hence, you cannot simply revoke the authorisation by asking the bank. You are supposed to tell the company to stop debiting, but if they don't respect your order, your bank will continue paying. The only way to assure that a company no longer debits is to write a letter of opposition to your bank, asking them to scan debit requests for the name of the company you don't want to pay. The bank will charge you for this service. Because of the fees associated with direct debit, I advise that you think twice before giving direct debit authorisation to anyone. It happens that companies like France Telecom overcharge you, and if they have a direct debit authorisation, you have the choice between letting them take too much money and waiting for a refund or paying your bank to prevent them from taking too much money. Either way, you lose. Do I need cheques? Yes! Because of the lack of online transfer capabilities, the French are still major consumers of cheques. Because of the fee structure for card payments in shops, many shops still refuse to take cards for payments below 15 €. You can only pay such small amounts in cash or by cheque. Given that a cheque is much more costly for the bank to process than a card payment, it is fairly ridiculous that they encourage cheque use like that, but so it is. The good news is that cheques are free in almost all banks. Many shops have printers to fill in the cheque for you, so you only have to verify and sign it. Credit Cards
Foreign Mastercard and Visa are usually accepted the same places where the French can use their national payment system carte bleue, often abbreviated to CB. All major shops and petrol / gas stations accept cards. Diners Card, American Express and foreign cash are not generally accepted. The French carte bleue is a chip card that needs a pin code instead of a signature as a security measure. The new UK chip cards generally work by entering your UK pin code. Older chip cards or cards without a chip must have their magnetic strip swiped. Most shop assistants outside tourist zones are not aware of this, and if you tell them, they don't even know that their card reader has a magnetic card reader. It's for you to tell them: C'est une carte étrangère sans puce; merci de lire la piste magnétique avec le lecteur que vous voyez à côté de votre lecteur à puce. If they still don't get it, ask for the manager: Je voudrais parler avec le responsable. When they figure out how to read the magnetic strip, the next problem is that the French centralised credit card validation computer network often has problems communicating with foreign clearing systems. When it fails, the shop won't accept your card, even by swiping it manually, and you may have to leave the shop without your goods if you have no other way to pay. They will show no mercy, even for last-minute shopping on a New Year's evening. They like tourists' money, but without the money, they couldn't care less. For large amounts, the banks may impose a limit for the amount at shop level that is lower than your card limit. Sometimes, it may work to split one large amount into several smaller amounts. French cards usually have a rolling 30-day spending limit that your foreign card doesn't have. Don't expect to get any help from the shop's card centre, as they don't know a thing about foreign cards and foreign payment limits and they cannot understand that foreign cards don't have a 30-day limit like the French cards or maybe no limit at all.
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