Hi all. Hope everyone is well. We are in the process of getting our fosse septic to conform to regulations. We have sought three devis. My dilemma is how do I reject two of the devis politely by email as I don’t want to cause offence. (My French is unfortunately very poor so I’ll be using DeepL. Thanks in advance for any advice. 
I’d say it would be exactly as if nixing two quotes in UK.
It depends on what grounds you are rejecting the two. If purely on price you could say “… your quote is perfectly satisfactory except for the price. If you are able to revise it with a reduction of +/- €XXX I would be happy to reconsider my decision.”
If on the basis of the work to be undertaken you could ask for any omissions to be included for the same [lower] quoted price.
If you don’t want to get involved in renegotiating or revising price/schedule of works just say “Thank you for your estimate/quote. I am engaging/agreed terms another contractor”
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Thanks for that advice
Lest said, soonest mended……so just simply say that you are grateful for time and effort in preparing a quote but you will be not be taking it further,
You can be as flowery as you like, but the the bottom line is that it’s no, so there’s nothing else to be said. Just say it politely.
To haggle now, unless you would seriously consider a revised offer from them, is not polite to me.
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But can be if a preferred sounding contractor is given a chance to reconsider. Some devis are based on how busy the builder is compared to how soon you require the work.
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Thanks Jane. I don’t want to get into renegotiating. The main reason for accepting the one we are going with is that they provided a very detailed devis with all costs outlined and they spent time talking through the process. One of the other devis was just a brief general description and a total price.
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That suggests to me that they did not really need the work. It sounds as if you’ve made a sound decision.
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Thanks for confirming what I thought.
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Doesnt sound like you need to, excellent explanation of your project and choice of contractor.
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Nope, this is France. It doesn’t work like that. @JaneJones is spot on.
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Thanks Corona
True, lucky to even get a devis in the same year!
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I’ve made savings by letting contractors choose when they do the work. I had around 100 pines cut down over five or six years by a large contractor who normally I couldn’t afford to use by him sending men that were at a “loose end” every now and then to do the work. €100 a tree, big or small, all I did was to paint a white ring on the ones I wanted clobbered next, ten at a time. In contrast, I needed three or four very large pines cut down by him quickly at one stage and it cost a lot of money.
I’ve done the same with other work on the house and land. There’s value in not being in a hurry and value for the contractor in having “something in the bag”. Possibly less so now when everyone seems busy, but still worth a try.
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Presumably that included the etude de sol and SPANC etc? Having listened for years to our French friends saying don’t bother about it, we bit the bullet and replaced our fosse last year and are now compliant. We used a local terrassier we’d used before for other work and trusted. All done in about three days including final SPANC inspection.
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We still need to discuss parts of the process before signing the Devis. We have the report from SPANC (which was done last year before we bought the house). The company we are going to use are on the list that SPANC provided us with, have discussed our fosse with them and provided copies of their décennale assurance very promptly. They also said that the work should take 3 days.
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Have you tried Gboard? You can type directly into the box in English and it translates it into your letter or email. Not the easiest thing to get your mind round, but works well.
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