Foreign Perspectives

Although the French people themselves are very polite and welcoming, French companies are quite different and use all the anti-consumer laws that they have at their disposal in France even when they aren’t obliged to.

Take for example the car insurance industry. Everywhere else in the world it’s common practice for car owners to wait for their renewal premium to arrive then to shop around for cheaper insurance. In France, that’s illegal!

Yes, you read that correctly. It is actually illegal to shop around after your insurance renewal arrives because by that time you are already legally committed to paying it (regardless of the cost!). If you DO shop around, you’ll find that the previous insurance company will go as far as taking you to court to recover their money from you.

As most insurance companies are international businesses, its interesting to look at how differently some of them operate outside France. Even the French-owned companies seem to be able to provide customer service everywhere else except in France. Having said that, it’s perhaps instructive to observe that French-owned AXA doesn’t mention anything about the customer in its strategy “Attain leadership in every one of our markets through operational excellence.”; I’ll certainly attest to its operational excellence in operation in France as it was very quick in issuing the court summons to me when I had the temerity to attempt to cancel a policy because the price had doubled between me accepting it and them issuing the invoice.

Interestingly, the set of laws that permit them to do this run completely contrary to the equivalent European laws (which apply in France). The insurance companies know this, of course, and therefore if you are cancelling it’s useful to remind them that it will be European law that you’ll be using against them rather than their nice cozy anti-customer French law which tends to stop the court action rather quickly. They clearly can’t afford to lose such a case in court as it would open up competition in the insurance market in France rather more than they seem comfortable with.