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This is what happens when you buy prepaid mobile in France.
Firt, you try and buy a sim card on a Monday.
Bad move.
They’re open Saturday which means that they close on Monday as compensation.
The next time you’re in a major city is Wednesday, so you try and buy a card from Orange.
Their authorisation system’s having “probleme technologique” in the morning so you buy it in the afternoon.
You can’t actually USE it of course, because they’ve taken a copy of your passport and the Gummint has to confirm the fact that you’re not a terroriste which takes 24 hours.
Or 36 hours.
They don’t TEXT you to tell you, so you keep on trying.
Only then can you buy a flatrate data option which costs €9 a month, which is certainly better than €30 an hour.
Except this supposedly takes another 48 hours and they don’t TEXT you tell you it’s been activated so a couple of times a day, you activate the cellular data option on your phone to see if you’re being charged by the minute.
Which you are.
After 72 hours.
And you’ve already used up just about all of the €25 credit that you put on your phone…..
At this rate, I might be able to use it by the time we go home.
No point trying to find out tomorrow.
It’s Monday…..

>Ahem, what can I say.Vive la France hardly seems appropriate. Thank heavens the region offers a few compensations. Friendly locals for example.