I'm impressed

Alibris: I owe you an apology. I received an email this morning from a named customer service rep, telling me that I didn't need to return the book they wrongly sent me. She suggested that if I didn't want it, I should pass it on to a friend or donate it to a library. Fast, efficient, thoughtful service -- outstanding!

A dilemma

I receive two packages from Alibris. One contains the book I ordered. The other contains an art book that someone in Australia ordered but that Alibris decided to ship to me instead.

Being a good global citizen, I head over to the Web site to check out what I should do. Hmm. It's easy enough to return books that YOU ordered and that YOU don't want; it's less obvious how you print out a return slip for a book that you didn't order and don't want.

Let's see, Contact Us -- that should do it. The only phone number is a US one -- not that they tell you that, of course. Right, an automated email form. They want an order number -- let's use the one from the Australian order. And off it goes, into the ether.

I am somewhat skeptical that I will ever receive a (helpful) response. Oh well, looks like I'll be able to learn to read Chinese paintings, should the mood take me.

Let the train take the strain

Last week's silky dream of a commute into London was clearly that -- a dream. This week, I walked PJ up to the station (he's still not so good on navigation) to catch the 7.48, strolled home, went back to sleep for 30 minutes, and was woken up by PJ ringing the doorbell at 8.30. The 7.40 had broken down at Shawford, delaying all the subsequent trains, leaving crowds eight-deep at Winchester Station and no prospect of getting into London. Ho hum. He did make it in later on in the day and back again without any problem, though -- and got a full refund on his ticket and was able to get a cheaper fare later on, so it wasn't all bad. And walking uphill to the station twice in a morning was damn good exercise.

Bag lady

So, we went to Southampton yesterday to do essential "office supplies" shopping: a printer, filing cabinets, a pinboard for the Chinese takeaway menu -- the usual. It was a relatively successful trip, but I now have my first customer service complaint. None of the stores -- Staples, PC World, JJB Sports -- had plastic bags big enough to contain the items we bought. I wouldn't mind if this were a nod to climate change and they wanted to discourage you from using them, but no -- they had stacks of small bags available; they just didn't have bags large enough to take a yoga mat or a pinboard, for example. As a result, we had to stagger, arms laden with awkward-shaped boxes, across a major road and over two sets of steps to reach the platform for the Winchester train. Oh, the indignity!

The aga saga is DONE

The oven man came. He fixed the oven. He left. No apologies. It took 20 minutes AND SEVEN WEEKS but no apologies. I hate this frakking country sometimes.

I am spent.

The aga saga

My oven man has just phoned to say that he's on his way -- TO FIX MY OVEN!!!! However, I am not discounting the possibility -- nay, likelihood -- that he will discover that he's ordered the wrong part and that he therefore cannot fix it before we leave. It's not a question of the glass being half-empty as much as the glass has been drained dry and then stolen.

O-day: April 4

As expected, Whirlpool failed to call me yesterday. I phoned them yet again this morning, and once again explained the situation. It's now a bit like my father's ability to read Harry the Dirty Dog off by heart to us when we were kids and demanding a bedtime story;* I know the dates, the promises, the missed appointments and can recite them rote. Anyway, the lady on the other end said that it looked like the engineer had the spare part and would come round on April 4, but that she'd check with a colleague and call me to confirm. Which she did. As did another colleague, 10 minutes later. So I don't know whether I've got two appointments or just one, but I don't care. My oven MIGHT get fixed less than a week before we move out.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

* Harry was a white dog with black spots who liked everything, except having a bath. So one day, when he heard the water running in the tub, he picked up the scrubbing brush and he buried it in the back garden ...

Mike Todman is dead to me

No response from Mike Todman, President of Whirlpool International.* He is clearly ignoring my email. Well, he's off my Christmas card list, oh yes! Perhaps I could send him a rusting oven tray as a threat ...

*I'm hoping he Google's his name each morning and will thus find my bitter little rants against him. Book smarts, you see!

My Whirlpool nightmare continues

I just called Whirlpool. Again. On my first call, they cut me off as one of their call center staff picks up the phone. I take a deep breath. And call again. And get through.

"Shall I give you my customer number?"
"No. Our computer system is down and we can't look up at any information."

The woman did take all my details and did seem to understand that this was urgent. She might also have detected the note of hysteria in my voice as I outlined the problem. She promised that someone would call me back today.

I'm not holding my breath.

I sent an extremely stroppy email to the president of Whirlpool International -- one Mike Todman -- last night, complaining about the inefficiency of his Dutch operation. Not that there was an email address or even list of board members on the Whirlpool site; you can only get a number for customer "service" or press. But I figured that mtodman@whirlpool.com might work, and nothing has bounced back so far. Of course, it's highly likely that Whirlpool's global computer system has ground to a halt under the weight of so many complaints.

I am only one more phone call away from going down to Breda and taking the customer service center hostage until they get someone to fix my oven. Or setting up a word-of-mouth campaign to blacken the name of Whirlpool globally. I wonder if "Whirlpool are a bunch of frakkers.blogspot.com" has been taken?

Waiting for UPC

On rereading my previous post, I think I was too kind to UPC. Yes, my designated customer service rep was lovely when I got to speak to her, but I would much rather have carried out my transaction online. Or at least been able to access my online account.

The 10-step login process went a little like this:

1. Go to www.upc.nl and enter client login details.
2. OK, user name -- probably ndumpling. It's been years since I logged in.
3. Nope, ndumpling is wrong. Try norfolk dumpling.
4. Wrong again. Hmm, how about Norfolk Dumpling.
5. Damn, I've been thrown out of the system. Because accessing your cable subscription details online is a lot like using an ATM and just as prone to fraud.
6. Go to "Forgotten your client details, muppet?"
7. Enter client number and surname. Ooh! I have this. It's on the online bills they send me once per quarter. Excitedly copy/paste in client number and surname.
8. Client number not recognized. WHAT!?!
9. Try tapping in client number carefully.
10. Still no joy. Give up and phone the call center.

It helped to pass the time. But, as Beckett would have it, the time would have passed anyway.

More customer service tales of woe

My Whirlpool tales of woe continue. Suffice to say, the planning department never called me back, and when I called today, my unhelpful customer service representative merely said that the engineer had ordered the part on Friday (!), it should take 5 working days to arrive in the Netherlands from Italy -- because apparently FedEx doesn't work the Italy-NL route -- and my obviously unreliable engineer will call me about when he's able to come round. Yeah yeah. I've put a reminder in my diary to phone back on Friday, and I will devote some time to finding out the name and phone number of the head of Whirlpool so that I can shout at him/her.

In contrast, cancelling our UPC service today was almost laughably simple. After wrestling with their IVR system, a very nice lady told me the service would be switched off in one month's time. Nothing about a final bill or cancelling the direct debit, but I'm sure that will all follow naturally. Ahem.

And to prove that it's not just the Netherlands that suffers from complicated bureaucracy, yesterday I had to deal with First Direct banking application forms. PJ and I want to set up a joint account to pay rent and bills from back in the UK. First up, they need my permanent UK address. I don't have one. Then they need proof of my residence at said UK address in the shape of a utility bill or bank statement -- and it has to be an original, not a photocopy. Again, I don't have any of these. We phone the call center and get a good Northern lass who tells us not to worry, to put down PJ's mum's address (his UK permanent address) and to just skip the proof of residence; as PJ is an account-holder with them, it "should" be fine. Again, we'll see. But at least I understood their IVR system.

So, all we have left are the mortgage company, the contents insurance company, the life insurance company, the bank, the water service, the city of Amsterdam, and our Dutch pensions company. Should be easy!

Guess what?

I just got a call from Whirlpool. As predicted earlier this week, the engineer can't come to fix my oven today because -- get this -- the spare part isn't actually in his car. So, on Monday, I was told that a different engineer couldn't come to fix my oven because the spare part was in the original engineer's car; now that part has mysteriously disappeared. The planning department will call me either later today or on Monday -- because they don't work on weekends and NEITHER DOES MY OVEN! -- and let me know when someone will fix it.

I honestly don't believe that this will be resolved before we complete on the apartment. I have baked my last loaf of bread in the Netherlands.

Bastards. Never buy anything from Whirlpool.

My oven is doomed

Well, that's what it's beginning to feel like. The repairman was due today, but Whirlpool just called to tell me that his wife gave birth last night so he's not working today. Which is understandable, but frustrating. You see, he has the spare parts in his car, so nobody else can fix my oven today. They don't know when he will be back at work -- probably by Wednesday as this is his third child and he presumably doesn't care about it as much as he did the first two -- but they will call to let me know, 30 minutes before he arrives. So, I either go to work on Wednesday and prepare to jump on my bike as soon as I get the call, or I stay at home for the week. Gah. I hate this system!

Oh well, at least I got the vacuuming done. Now I can go to work!

And that was the oven man on the phone

My oven man just called me. "I have terrible news" he said -- not the best way to open a conversation but an excellent example of Dutch directness. "The part won't be available for several weeks." Although, it will be available before we move out on April 11th, OR SO HE CLAIMS!

I am distraught. No home-made bread for several weeks!?! PJ has offered to buy me a breadmaker to get round this problem. I am very tempted. Does this make me a deeply sad person?

I am also making sure I only ever get household appliances from major manufacturers and distributors. None of this "hand-crafted by artisans in small mountain-top villages in Italy" rubbish. It's got to be big, it's (probably) got to be German, and they have to have spare parts on tap.

That was the oven man

He was here for all of 5 minutes and told me that the heating element in the oven was broken, he needed to order a new part, and that it would have to come from Italy so would take at least a week. Luckily, it shouldn't cost more than about 175 euros, including labour and parts and today's visit. However, I knew the heating element was broken. If the oven doesn't heat up but the grill, microwave, and fan still work, it's a pretty safe assumption that that's the problem. I told the Whirlpool customer help line this when I phoned on Monday. So why couldn't they have ordered the part then?!? Instead, I am left breadless for another week (at least). Grrr.

Do you know the oven man? The oven man? The oven man!

I am waiting for the oven man, the man who will magically restore my ability to make bread. Or rather, my oven's ability to bake bread. I have no knowledge of when he will arrive; he will simply call 30 minutes before he intends to be here, thus allowing me enough time, presumably, to cycle home from wherever I am in Amsterdam and be there to let him in. I am working from home, just to be on the safe side, but dare not go to the toilet for the rest of the day in case he calls and I don't answer. I've already had a coffee though -- damn.

He will be paid in cash -- 99.50 euros, to be precise. Apparently, 100 euros is either insufficiently complicated a sum or just too much for the Dutch to contemplate paying -- although, inevitably, I will have to pay 100 euros. I very much doubt he carries a big bag of 50-cent coins around with him, preferring instead to look mildly incredulous that I can't give him the exact amount. "These crazy, overpaid expats!" he'll think. "Throwing away a good 50 cents because they can't be bothered to find the right amount!"

The 99.50 is just for him turning up and doing some work. It does not include parts. I don't know how I will be billed for those, whether I will be expected to rustle up another 100 euros at the drop of a hat or whether I will have to go out to the nearest cash point to get more money. It would be helpful if they billed us, but that doesn't appear to be an option yet. Who still carries large quantities of cash round with them? I use PIN for everything, as I suspect many people here do -- it means you can pay the exact amount in a supermarket instead of being overcharged by the cashier rounding the amount up to the next 5 cents. Maybe that's why so many people in the queues at Deen, our lunchtime supermarket near work, look so confused when they're asked to hand over money for goods purchased; instead of just being stupid, they've merely lost their PIN card and have no idea what these strange pieces of paper and shiny coins are. (I won't miss going to Deen every day. Oh no.)

No sign of the oven man yet. I'll keep you posted.

Restaurant review: Scarlett

Or should that be incandescent with suppressed rage? No, not me for once, but one of our companions at dinner last night. I'd booked a table for four at Scarlett, an Italian restaurant on the Harlemmerstraat. I've walked past it many times and admired the flower displays in the window -- admittedly not a great criteria for choosing a restaurant -- and last night presented the perfect opportunity to try it out. The reviews on the IENS site had been very positive...about the food. Service, not so much and with good reason. We turned up, had our coats grudgingly taken by the maitre d' (the only front-of-house staff) and sat at our table. And waited 15 minutes for the menus to arrive. This is not totally unusual in Dutch restaurants -- they're often waiting for the one or two English menus to return before handing them to us, but we can translate restaurant Dutch pretty fluently now. The menus arrived, we chose what we wanted, and then waited. And waited. And waited for someone to take our order.

Keep in mind, this was not a large restaurant. There were perhaps 18 customers last night, so even with just one waiter, it should have been fine. But no. Mr Slowcoach would go sit down at a table and chat to a couple of ladies there, admirably ignoring all the diners trying to catch his eye. After he took our order, he asked if we wanted wine, took his own sweet time bringing the wine list, took even longer to actually bring the wine we ordered, and then failed to open it. Seriously. He left it at our table and headed off for another chat for 10 minutes. At this point, Zjef went over to ask him to perform the task and was told "Time out, time out!" -- as if he'd requested something completely unreasonable.

The rest of the meal continued in the same vein, even down to forgetting to bring us the second bottle of wine we'd asked for -- but remembering to include it on the bill at the end. When we asked for forks to eat our main course with -- again, a not unreasonable request in a restaurant -- he told us to be patient. While our food was getting cold. If there's one thing that is guaranteed to send my blood pressure sky-high, it's people patronising me when I'm making a perfectly reasonable request and am just a teensy bit put out about the fact that something isn't right with the "experience" I'm paying for (c.f., the KLM check-in employee who was completely unapologetic when telling me that I'd been bumped from a flight because they'd overbooked it and that I shouldn't get upset with him because it wasn't HIS fault. Aargh!!! Where do they find these people!) I don't want or expect American-style rushed dining, but I would like to be able to eat a meal when it's put in front of me.

But, the food was fantastic. Very reasonably priced and absolutely delicious. I had salmon tempura with salad, two huge pieces of salmon beautifully cooked -- and only 7.50 euros. The pasta main wasn't quite as good but still very nice. All the other dishes on the table were highly praised. We paid 100 euros total for 4 starters, 4 main courses (including two of the more expensive ones), bread, a bottle of a decent Pinot Grigio, and a bottle of sparkling water. We couldn't face the agony of ordering dessert and coffee, but from what I saw going to other tables, both looked excellent -- when they arrived. However, the restaurant lost at least 50 euros of additional business from us -- and almost certainly from other tables, too -- and that makes it hard to recommend to anyone else.

Approach with caution -- and plenty of time on your hands.

Kaizen this, muthaf*****

A recent Observer article tried to understand why so many people keep diaries -- or blog, as it's known in the 21st century. The assorted luminaries responded with uplifting replies along the lines of "Remembering those I love" and "Recording my memories as a way of confirming that I'm alive and can still remember things" -- the usual bollocks. They failed to ask why I blog, but I will tell you. It's so that every petty irritation that life flings at me is matched by an equal, yet opposing twinge of glee: "That will make a great blog post!"

So in this spirit of blogging being my way of dealing with crap customer service, I give you this little gem. And no, Dutch readers (if there are any left), don't despair: This time I'm pissed off with the Japanese. A few months ago, I bought a winter coat from Muji, and very nice it was too. But then, the tape covering the zips started to peel away and get caught, and one of the press studs embedded itself in its "hole" and wouldn't come out. In the last few days, the zips on both pockets have given up the ghost, making it both non-waterproof and time to complain and ask for this to be fixed or for my money back. I head over to the UK Muji Web site, looking for their customer complaints department. This is what I found.

Muji has always encouraged strong communication with both its customers and employees. Through a process known as “Kaizen” or “Continuous Improvement” we welcome comments and suggestions about all aspects of our business. If you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to contact us.

OK, sounds good. Where's the list of ways to contact Muji. It turns out there's just one: snail mail. No email address, no phone number, and a list of FAQs that allow you to report a technical problem with the Web site but not with the goods they actually sell. WTF!?!? What global company that sells stuff online only has a postal address for any forms of contact? How can one possible continuously improve your service when you only get a tiny percentage of potential feedback because most people don't know how to write/post a letter anymore? I thought that dealing with a Japanese company would result in at least one ritual disembowelling for every complaint registered!

Hey, but at least it made a good blog post.

Holiday hassle

Of course, our return home wasn't as smooth as we might have wished. Thirty minutes in a queue at Norwich Airport while two ground staff attempted to check in a large number of people got the day off to a bad start. The pilot tried to apologize for this, stating that a lot of people were off sick today, but that didn't really cut it. The big problem was that many of the passengers hadn't prebooked their hold luggage and so were being charged SIX POUNDS for each suitcase. And so of course the ground staff had to "process the payment" at the check-in desk, which added extra time to an already slow check-in system. In addition, Flybe delayed its flight to Glasgow, but clearly didn't bother then segregating the queue to check in the remaining passengers for the (then) on-time flight to Amsterdam first. That would have been too simple, apparently. As a result, we sat on the plane waiting for the one last passenger and his/her luggage to turn up. And then, Privium had the temerity to not be working yet again -- we pay major ducats for this service each year, and it only appears to be in action about 50% of the time at the moment. Sigh.

And when we finally got into our somewhat chilly flat, we discovered that our power had managed to turn itself off at some point during our fortnight's absence -- probably on December 21. We're not sure why: After all, we weren't using the dreaded dishwasher/kettle combo when away. Regardless, the food in the freezer needs to be binned -- probably not a bad idea, given its age -- and I'm not sure my sourdough starter will recover (sniff). Oh well, could have been worse: the flat is positively icy and thus doesn't stink as much as it should. For our guests this weekend, it should be fine by New Year's Eve.

Yet another surreal eTrade experience

My company told me that I needed to contact eTrade corporate support to check whether I needed to complete a form that shows I'm a foreigner who doesn't pay tax in the US. Being both a good corporate citizen AND sufficiently pissed off about paying high levels of tax in the Netherlands, I decided to womanfully wrestle with eTrade's IVR system. I logged into my eTrade account, noted down my account number, and got started. Problem 1: The telephone system refused to acknowledge my password -- even though I'd just used it to access the Web site. Confused, I put down the phone, logged off, re-logged in to check that it was the password I thought it was, and then phoned again. Problem 2: The system didn't ask for my account number this time, but still refused to recognize my password -- twice. At this point, it kindly put me through to someone human. Problem 3: She told me that I my online access to the site was currently disabled and that we'd have to reset my password. I pointed out that this wasn't true and that I was, in fact, looking at my account details online at that very moment. She just giggled, pressed a few buttons, answered my question about form W-8BEN (and no, I don't have to recertify this year), and we bid each other adieu.

I hate that site (but I like my options).