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French village faces €15,000 exit bill for costly phone contracts

Farges-Allichamps' mayor says the small municipality cannot afford the legal costs of challenging agreements that left it paying far more than promised.

Channel: TF1 INFO ·

FranceStory of November 14, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? One of TF1 INFO's most watched videos since yesterday, with 111,776 views.

TF1 INFO: The news division of TF1, a private French television channel owned by the Bouygues group. 1.8M subscribers and 2B views.

Cette mairie paye 600 euros de téléphone par mois !｜TF1 INFO

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Two telephone lines have become a costly burden for Farges-Allichamps, a village in central France. Its mayor, Fabienne Trompas, says the municipality is trapped: the bills are far higher than the sales pitch promised, but leaving the contracts would mean another substantial payment.

France's TF1 INFO reports that a sales approach three years ago led to multiple agreements covering equipment leasing, insurance and maintenance. According to the report, a promised monthly charge of €67 became a bill of roughly €600.

Trompas describes the arrangement as a scam and a waste of public money. The report says the municipality has been asked to pay €15,000 to terminate the contracts. The mayor says the village cannot afford the legal costs needed to challenge them, leaving officials struggling to find a way out.

Residents interviewed put the expense in terms of what their community is losing. One objects to businesses taking advantage of small villages' difficulties; another points out that money spent on these bills cannot be invested elsewhere.

Farges-Allichamps, in the Cher department, is not an isolated case, according to the report. It concludes that dozens of other French municipalities with fewer than four thousand residents have suffered similar losses under telephone contracts.

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