Service in France

Your handy guide to french customer service:

For 'after sales service' : **** off

For 'before sales service': 'Count yourself lucky I'm lowering myself to serve you'

Most recent french service experience:

I had a meal served to me the other day with broken glass in it. They bought me a replacement and still charged me.

A day before that I had called wanadoo to say my internet wasn't functioning properly they suggested I went to the local branch of france telecom to get a replacement filter. When I told them that I had already tried 4 different filters they suggested I still went to the shop to get a 5th and that it might work. I don't think so. I sorted out the problem myself in the end.

Have the french got it right and the Brits and Americans are just very unchilled about customer service? Or am I right to be sick of being continually ripped off and treated like a nonentity with a wallet. The first day we arrived in France nearly four years ago a local said to us: 'Welcome to the land of the rip-off'. We laughed. I don't mind paying a lot of money for things that work. I do mind when the interest in me disappears at the moment the cheque is banked.