A little tale of 'why I'm not completely broken up about leaving' (or: 'how culture shock made me angry'): we subscribe to a cable service, NOOS by name. In France, it is customary (in fact, required) to send a registered letter to someone in order to end your contract with them. This costs roughly five euros a whack, and we had to cancel the cable, the phone, the newspaper, our apartment, etc. etc. Now, as we are moving out in about a week, it became obvious that we needed to contact the cable company and tell them to come get their boxes, 'cause we're leaving, and we're not taking them with us. So I call them. Joy number two of the French system - you pay (a lot) to call customer service. They put me on hold. They put me on hold for so long my phone ran out of money (ten euros). So I charged it up again, and called again. Got someone. I said 'hey - we're leavin'! Come get your stuff!' She asked me where I had sent the letter. She said 'that's the wrong address - you'll have to send another one to the correct address.' We had sent it to NOOS. they had signed for it. But it wasn't the right office. So it didn't count. So, all told, we spent eighteen euros (I kid you not - the second call was eight) to call customer service, plus ten if we send another registered letter. And we get to take the boxes to their office - they don't pick them up.
Of course, when I went to sign up for my gas and electric in the states, they wanted to run a background... excuse me... credit check on me, and if I didn't let them they wouldn't give me gas or electric without a deposit, so you tell me which system is better.