They responded with an essay of an e-mail this morning with the first 5 paragraphs blaming it on us. They said they normally research where they are delivering beforehand to determine where they can park such a large truck. However, we had not given them our address in a timely fashion so they could not do that. Now, I'm skimming this down to couple sentences, but keep in mind this is actually 5 paragraphs of them saying that we were the irresponsible party in this matter.
The only problem with that is it's utter bull. The application for the apartment was accepted on November 10th so we've known our address since then. I can't remember when we first told them of our address, but I know we told the US shipping side when we set up the appointment for shipping in the first week of December, and again on all the papers during shipping days. which were December 22nd and 23rd. It is not our fault that the French company decided to hire a third party shipper on the US side, who hired third party packers, and no one was communicating with one another. But both the US shippers and US packers had our French address, which should have been sent to the French company. If the French side wanted us to directly tell them our address, it should have been said. They could have called or e-mailed at any point in time, instead of just saying "Oh well we don't have the address and we don't feel like talking to the people we hired out or the people who are paying us, so we'll just wait until all the paperwork gets here with the shipment in the middle of January."
Then they go on to say once they finally got the address, the looked it up on google maps and "at a glance" everything looked good. So they waited until the 30th of January to contact the City Council of Besancon to reserve parking on the street for a truck that big for February 6th. Ever trying to make themselves look good, they assured us that this is "in the normal timing for authorization". On Monday the 2nd, the Council got back to them saying that since the tram station is on that street, they needed to have requested this a month in advance. This is somewhat understandable, as the google maps image is 4 years old and the tram system was built about 1 1/2 years ago. But I just don't understand the concept of "If it takes two weeks to do, only give yourself two weeks to do it." I'm more in the mindset of "I should do this as far in advance as possible because I know mess ups will happen." But I guess that's French mentality for you.
So then they go on to say how they drove out to the site to see how they could park the truck and maybe get around having to get a permit so that we won't have to wait another month. Meanwhile, they decide not to tell us any of this and let us assume we are still getting our delivery February 6th until they email us on February 5th saying, basically, "Syke! Lol".
They end the essay telling us that they will inform us of the new time once they have it, "Best regards, and good day". So, who knows when this will be happening. Maybe two weeks from now we'll get another email saying that they tried their best to do it without a permit but it didn't work and now we'll have to wait another month since they didn't bother trying to request a permit. All I know is I am so tempted to rent a hotel for a couple days just to sleep on a real bed.
I'd like to end this post on a different note. Right now, this blog is sounding pretty miserable. I want to say that even though all this is happening, I'm enjoying my time here so far. The people we've met are all so nice, and I love the city. It's just going to take a few months of getting the big stuff out of the way until I can fully express that. An international move accompanied by a language barrier is a huge adjustment. If you can, think about the last time you moved to a completely different area you had no knowledge of, or even going off to college, and then try to multiply that feeling times, like, 10. That is what we are dealing with right now. When things start settling down and Spring starts coming around, I'll make sure to post more pictures and you can see what I get to see every day, a beautiful city full of awesome people.