Brits in France: What should I do if I'm still waiting for my Brexit residency card?

RIFT may be mistaken. This is my experience. I applied for my Carte de Sejour in December 2020 and immediately received an acknowledgement letter to keep in my passport that showed I had applied in time. Next, I received an appointment in February but couldn't make it. This turned out to be a serious error, as my wife has often reminded me. I followed the procedure in the e-mail exactly, to arrange a new appointment and got no answer. I sent e-mails that were met with standard replies promising action within 5 days. Nothing. I rang up and a very nice lady at the switch board said “I know, I know but don't worry they are probably dealing with it”. No, I could not get through to Guichet G on the phone. Yes, she agreed it must be possible to speak to someone on the phone. “Supposing” I ventured, “I was the President, then you could put me through couldn’t you?” That, she agreed, was undoubtedly true but as she pointed out “You are not the President”. As the September 30 deadline approached 'probably’ dealing with it didn't seem quite good enough. So I sent a tactfully worded (well quite tactfully worded) Recorded Delivery with accusation de reception etc. and immediately got an appointment for September 22. [Was it my letter that stirred them into action or would they have sent it anyway – I shall never know.] The sting in the tail was that it was for 9.00 a.m. Anybody who knows anything about Strasbourg rush hour traffic knows that for an appointment at 9 a.m., you are either an hour early or an hour late. Or you take a train. Unfortunately some genius got rid of our little railway years ago. So we left our village at half past six in the morning having carefully made sure that we had every thing with us that a good fonctionnaire could possibly ask for over and above the standard, mask, own pen and letter of appointment. (Why own pen when you have to use their pen with special ink to fill in the sacred forms?) Unfortunately, in the excitement we had forgotten to put extra fuel in the car. Petrol is as difficult as trains first thing in the morning in our village and we had a life and death struggle in the semi-darkness with a fuel pump that only took credit cards… but not ours. Luckily, driving carefully, we made it to the nearest manned pump on the motorway where we filled up at an astronomical price per litre. After that things got better. Our Tom Tom took us to the door of the Prefecture where amazingly there were still plenty of empty parking spaces at a modest price per hour. The biggest problem was avoiding serious injury from hurtling cyclists, who did not seem to think that giving audible warning of approach was necessary. At the Prefecture the security was heavy – Strasbourg has suffered a serious terrorist attack - but courteous, manned as far as I could tell entirely by policemen from the Midi with beautiful accents and plenty of good humoured badinage. Looking around it was obvious that us Brexiters were, as Clarke Gable put it in his final words in Gone With the Wind ‘le cadet de mes soucis’, the least of their worries. All the flotsam and jetsam, all the human wreckage of all those wars our rulers have so light heartedly ignited, triggering the great immigration from East to West, was in the hall we were directed to. Hanging about waiting, waiting to be interviewed and hoping to hear the answers that could transform their lives. Perfectly groomed families with perfectly groomed and unnaturally well behaved children, queued to present their case for being allowed to stay and work. It was like sun bathing on a beach in Greece when suddenly a boat load of refugees comes ashore. The contrast between our apparently important worries and their real concerns was that great. On the dot of nine of clock I was called by loud speaker to guichet I, not before a very courteous Afghan offered me a seat. I duly labored to provide all eight finger prints plus two thumbs on the glass plated machine. As instructed, I read all the documents to make sure the details were correct before they were enshrined in the official record and on my card. Despite the injunction to take the greatest care because nothing could be changed afterwards, I did not point feel it necessary to point out that I was born in the Royal County, not the County of Berkshire. I thought they might think I was taking the mickey. The lady was charming and helpful and sympathetic that having had a Carte de Sejour years ago and been told I didn’t need it that I now had to go through all this again. Finally, after much coming and going, she put in front of me the sacred document. Shock, horror, all it turned out to be was a temporary carte, with the advice to please watch out carefully in three months’ time for an SMS telling me that I will be able to make an appointment and come back and get the real one. Was this temporary carte one with which I could safely travel across the Schengen Area? She didn’t know for sure but would ask. Yes her colleague thought that it was… ‘normalement’. After this life looked up. The policemen at the entrance pointed us to a truly superb café in the Avenue des Vosges, clearly well irrigated with the lush expense accounts of the nearby European Institutions. There we recovered over a café, croissants and a delicious cake that I thought only existed today in my memories of France in the 1960s.