French letters: get the right postbox

When it comes to postboxes, like many other little things in French society, you might think France is a little bit, well, bureaucratic.

There’s a grain of truth in this, and several times we have found ourselves at the receiving end of officious officials in post offices or at the Trésor or even buying a TV. The kind of people who make our Irish civil servants seem like pussy cats.

But France is also quite a logical and rational society. This is the country that gave the world the metric system, as well as the ISO and lots of other international standards. Ireland, by contrast, is a rambling mayhem: in our country we don’t even have postal codes!

La boîte aux lettres

So it’s no surprise that in France your postbox (boîte aux lettres) ought to comply with the recommended official dimensions. These are specified by the Association Française de Normalisation (AFNOR), and the letter box should be approved by La Poste (the French Post Office).

The dimensions are:

• Largeur (width) : 260mm
• Hauteur (height) : 260 mm
• Profondeur (depth) : 340mm

Prices for postboxes in supermarkets and bricolage depots can vary enormously. They start at around €20, but don’t forget to look for the “NF” quality mark (la marque NF pour une meilleure garantie. C’est l’assurance d’un produit de qualité).

The French postbox (and the NF mark)

Le facteur (the postal worker) also carries a master key to the box so he (or she) can easily leave small parcels and packets if you’re not in.

Having a decent size postbox is essential if you are going to be away from your French home for several months at a time. You don’t want the mail to be overflowing when you return. The box should also be fairly watertight if it needs to withstand long periods of winter/spring rains.

The box should list all the names of the residents at your address.

Where to put it

Where you place the box is also important: it should be on the roadside perimeter or entrance to your property, at the right height so that the facteur can pop the post into it without having to get out of his/her van.

So AFNOR says it should be positioned at a height of between 80 and 150 centimetres. All these rules and regulations are sensible enough when you consider how much walking these workers would otherwise have to do in rural areas.

Before you ask: all this also means that you cannot have a British or Irish style letter box, where the post is delivered straight to your doormat rather than in a box outside and possibly quite a distance from your front door (unless you live in an apartment block, or if your property fronts onto the street).

Pas de Pub

Pas de publicité dans cette boîte à lettres

A second absolutely essential thing to have is a “Pas de Pub” sticker for your postbox.

Compared with Ireland, France is completely swamped with publicité – advertising or junk mail.

This soon means there is no room for the post that really matters. You can get one of these “no junk mail please” stickers from your mairie, in the supermarket or brico, or by making your own.

The sticker should say something like “Publicité, non merci”, “Stop pub” (yes, a rather English phrase) or quite simply “PAS DE PUB”. If you’re feeling polite, add “SVP” (s’il vous plaît) at the end.

You might want to indicate that you do want to continue to receive local official publications such as the village or département mag – “l’information des collectivités locales (journaux de la municipalité, de l’agglomération, du département ou de la région)”.