The post office offers a fast and cheap service when it comes to sending cards or parcels abroad. To post a card to any destination within Europe costs 70 cents and the card typically arrives within three days. If your French is poor, fear not. To purchase a stamp in the post office, look for the yellow machines within the building that look similiar to a stand alone atm machine. These machines have touch screens with a English language option, just place your envelope on the metal tray on top of the machine and key in the country of desintation. The price will appear on screen and the machine accepts coins and once you have paid a sticker stamp will print that you can put on your envelope. Post boxes are available just outside the main entrance. However make sure you place your envelope in the correct slot [there are 2 slots - 1)post within France and 2) post outside of France].
When the time comes to move home, you may find you have far more stuff than the airline will allow you to take onboard. This is where the post office can help. They provide a parcel service known as Colissimo. You must go to your local post office and purchase this box, the largest one available is Colissimo XL and allows you to post a max weight of 7kg. The cost of this box is just under €31 (postage included), once you have paid for it, you bring it home, fill it up, tape it and bring it back to the post office where they weight it and then add it to their to outgoing post. This is fantastic value and sometimes they allow you to go over the max weight - my parcel was over 8kg but no fuss was made of it. To bring that on the plane would have cost somewhere in the region of €100. The package even got to Ireland in 4 working days, what a service!!
For more information in English, visit www.laposte.com and select the 'already living in France' tab.
No comments:
Post a Comment