Free: why they are the worst internet service in France and why you should avoid them at all costs

So after I wrote that nice summing up of my time in France post, I thought it was only right I should write a post about the trouble that Free have caused and are still causing us even though we've been out of the country for three months.
So we subscribed to an internet service with Free for 29.99 a month. This came out of my French bank account by direct debit. The service they provided was patchy at best, with us not even being able to get internet connection in our living room when the Freebox was in my bedroom. Bear in mind our apartment was only 62m squared. In order to cancel your subscription with Free, you have to fill out a form at the beginning of the month you want to be your final month and send it to them recorded delivery (costing you 5 euros anyway) and then they acknowledge they've received it and your account should be closed at the end of the month. You then have to wait to pay a 49 euro closure fee, which I thought was pretty ridiculous but there was no getting around it so we resigned ourselves to paying it.
Anyway, the end of April came and we sent off our actual box, got the receipt for that and went on our way back to England. Then, in the first week of May, I received an email saying that they couldn't take the direct debit out of my account to bill me for May. I responded saying that they shouldn't be billing me as our account should be closed, to which they sent another email saying they'd never received anything about closing the account. So we had to get Louise's mentor teacher involved (who is the loveliest woman on earth) who then repeatedly attempted to contact them on the phone and got nowhere. She then sent copies of the receipts, and after waiting to hear from them they billed me for June. So we sent the letter again. They then finally acknowledged the closure of the account, but said it would be closed from the 1st July, and that we still had to pay May and June. Which we obviously were not going to do. Nathalie attempted to contact them on the phone again, to no reply.
I then received another email from a company that deals with unpaid utility bills in France, saying that we had to pay the bills for May and June or they would take legal proceedings. So now, Nathalie has had to send ANOTHER letter to this other company, with further copies of the receipts, hoping that they will finally deal with it all. I was also told they wouldnt attempt to take the direct debit of the 49 euro closure fee out of my account so I could pay it online, but guess what, they've still attempted it. So now I'll probably have another fee hiked up on top of that.
It's all been pretty stressful and horrible. I would say to anyone going on a year abroad in France to avoid them at all costs, they may look like a good deal but their service is pretty shitty and also they are clearly crooks that want to extort as much money out of you as possible. It's the last thing you need when you're moving country.

Le fin

So I realised I never wrote a post about the end of my time in France. I really wasn't very good at keeping this blog up.
The last few days we spent in France, towards the end of April, were really bizarre. We had to pack up our entire lives, as we had an unfurnished flat and had to return it in the way we found it, completely bare. So we spent three days completely stripping this apartment of all the life we had managed to fill it with in the first place, which wasn't the most fun thing to do in the world. The cardboard boxes we had turned into coffee tables eventually became cardboard boxes again, filled with all my odds and ends, and the ugly white sofa got returned to whoever actually gave that to us in the first place, but luckily carrying it down eight flights of stairs was a hell of a lot easier than carrying it up there. We got a pretty good workout from de-furnishing (is that a word?) that flat. But it was kind of heartbreaking. Seeing those bedrooms and the living room completely and utterly bare again, bringing back the memories of when Louise and I were literally sitting in the empty living room with just a mattress as furniture waiting for the electrician to come and turn the power on whilst we read free supermarket magazines to keep us amused. It was, in the Rachel and Monica sense of it, the end of an era. But anyway, we stripped the apartment bare, some tears were shed, and then we ended up going our separate ways.
It was a strange seven months, that's for sure. Absolutely full of ups and downs, but still a great experience that I'll probably never have again. It went so fast, towards the end it was unbelievable. We actually felt like we needed more time to sort everything out.
But I was glad to be home in the end. Although Rouen was a great place to live and even though I didn't have the best experience in the world the whole time I was there I would still absolutely recommend it as a place to live.