Tuesday, 14 September 2004
Phone Fun, Part II
As you could probably guess, the "fun" in the title (as in my last entry with the same name) is purely facetious. Conscious as I am of how many of my recent entries have been negative, I decided to hold off writing anything more about this little escapade until I was well and truly done. Well, done I am (I hope).
I got a call this morning from some guy at the Phone House, letting me know that they'd received my repaired phone. So, 'round about lunchtime I wandered on over. Sure enough, it was repaired - I tested it before paying. Before anything else happened, I left.
Pretty bland stuff, true. But you're going to love what I was saving until now: About two weeks ago, I'd gotten the long-awaited phone call to inform me that my (unrepaired) phone had finally been returned to the store. Would I like to repair it? Yes, I let them know. That was a Monday.
The same week, on Wednesday, I get another phone call. Same guy, the same Phone House store. Say, he says, with a touch of worry in his voice. I was all set to send in your phone, when I noticed that the screen was broken. Did you still want me to send it in?
Pause.
Me, not believing it.
Yes, I told him. And reminded him that this was how the whole story began well over one month earlier.
Which leads us up to today. Just under two weeks after it was (correctly) sent to the repair center, it came back. Repaired and working - which, may I remind you, are not necessarily the same thing. But is was as it should be, things worked - though only after I had first navigated a twisty maze of dead-ends for a month and a half.
Patrick, one of my associates, said that I should have bitched and screamed until they waived the repair fee. And I had gone in prepared to do something similar, at least trying for a reduction. But no one who I'd dealt with before - not the guy who took it, not the one who passed me off on the support number (a toll line, as always), not the woman who had dismissed my wait with "what do you expect, it's vacation time" - not one person was there today.
Frankly, I just felt too winded by this whole two-month ordeal. Which is, of course, the very goal of the French way of "customer service." It's no one's responsibility, no one's job - no one's, that it, besides the customer himself. And more often than not, he ends up with a hoarse throat and little to show for it.
If indeed the meek will one day inherit the Earth (which, incidentally, I strongly disbelieve), then anyone capable of successfully navigating French services will be long gone by that point.