I haven't had a rant for a while and this is a good one.
I have finally managed to cancel our house insurance, seven months after selling the house in France but I am still in the process of cancelling our 'mutuelle' insurance' five months after leaving France.
This all boils down to one thing, trust.
French bureaucracy automatically assumes that you are either an imbecile or a liar. You always have to prove that what you are saying is true! This extends from government through to commercial enterprises like insurance. I first came across this when I decided not to renew the insurance for the dogs. In the UK if you fail to pay your renewal premium your insurance is cancelled. Simple.
In France, unless you give two months notice in a prescribed format (a formal letter which has to be sent recorded delivery) of your intention to cancel, your insurance will continue and you will owe the following year's premium. They will not accept it any other way. It's the law!
They appear to go out of their way to make it difficult for you to cancel. With this in mind I alerted AXA France in November of last year of my intention to cancel all my insurances prior to leaving France but, in the case of the house insurance, because the insurance was only half way through its term I had to send official proof that the house had been sold from the notaire (solicitor). They can't take your word for it because you are presumed to be a liar.
I am still in the process of cancelling my health top up insurance. They seem to make it as difficult as possible for you to make any change and take premiums from you in the meantime.
For those not familiar with the French health system, this is (I believe) a mandatory insurance that covers the portion of medical costs that the state does not cover (approx 30 %).
OK, in order to cancel this insurance with AXA I need the piece of paper sent by CPAM (French Health Service) that states that I am no longer covered. That's the first joke.
The notion that CPAM, who are notoriously useless when it comes to doing anything practical or useful (and famous for losing documents), is nothing more than a fantasy and to receive a piece of paper from them to an address abroad is even more fantastical.
If you ever want to see the Gallic shrug just visit a French government office. French civil servants are notorious in their lack of compassion and go slow attitude. I say this from personal experience.
If I can't provide evidence from CPAM that I am no longer covered by them, I have to prove that I am covered by the NHS. That's because I'm assumed to be either lying or stupid or some combination of both.
Have you ever heard of anything more ridiculous and frustrating than this?
The story continues.
Have you anything to substantiate these comments?
ReplyDelete.... obviously it will need to come from a qualified third party.
It sounds horrendous. We must have been lucky as our insurance for house, car and health were all canceled on the dates we requested without issue.
ReplyDeleteMind you, it took the notaire almost 3 weeks to wire transfer the cash from the house sale to the UK after promising that it would be done "the next day". Their excuse was that they were "too busy to make the transfer"!
Quite interesting really. I talked to my Primary Care Trust yesterday and asked for their help. They were great and immediately ordered new NHS cards for us with our current address and will also send a covering letter stating that we are covered by the NHS. All this for some poxy insurance company. There's a lot of doom and gloom around at the moment but I'd encourage folks to look beyond the crap and cherish what's good about this country.
ReplyDelete