Possibly the worst customer service experience I’ve had in Europe as an international student with Free
I’m leaving France for:
🇧🇪 a professional internship in Belgium
🇵🇹 an Erasmus exchange semester in Portugal
To cancel my #Freebox subscription without paying €69 in termination fees, I submitted:
✔️ Official Internship contract and Attestation
✔️ Official Erasmus acceptance letter from the host university
All documents were authentic, official, and issued in my name and signed, attested by the official from the organisation.
Yet Free repeatedly rejected them using copy-paste responses, insisting that only a rental lease, work contract, property purchase, or consular registration would be accepted. Apparently, being an Erasmus student moving across Europe with official university documentation is still “not enough.”
What makes this even more absurd is that student accommodation abroad is often finalized later in the process. Demanding finalized housing contracts months in advance from students is completely disconnected from reality.
Instead of reviewing the situation properly, the response was essentially:
“Pay the €69 anyway.”
At this point, it honestly feels like the goal is simply to collect money from customers regardless of the situation. If a customer already provides valid official documents proving relocation abroad, why disguise this as a “termination fee exemption process” while making it practically impossible to qualify?
What shocked me even more was the behavior of customer support.
One customer service representative told me:
“Wait, let me speak otherwise I’ll end the call.”
This happened while I was already frustrated after spending 3–4 days trying to resolve the issue and repeatedly explaining the same situation.
Another support representative admitted that the issue happened because the Portugal document appeared later in the uploaded PDF and their team apparently only reviewed the first pages carelessly. I was literally told to call again and re-upload the same documents in a different order because:
“the last page about Portugal doesn’t slide properly on PC.”
So after submitting all official documents correctly, the burden was still placed entirely on me because the file was not viewed properly by their internal team. This is not customer support.
This is careless handling, poor communication, and complete disregard for international students navigating internships and Erasmus mobility across Europe.
International students already deal with enough administrative complexity across countries.
Due to the way this situation has been handled, I have also formally raised a complaint through DGCCRF - Ministère de l'Économie
If this is how legitimate customers and international students are treated despite providing official documentation, then serious questions need to be asked about the ethics and professionalism behind these business practices.
#Erasmus #InternationalStudents #ConsumerRights #CustomerService