ITSNOTPOSSIBLE.NL

The Invisible Customer. Episode 2: Invisible Customer vs The Blind Optician

BASED ON A TRUE STORY (unfortunately)!

CAST:
Itsnotpossible.nl reader Paul....................The invisible Customer
Pearle Optician............................................The Blind Optician
Pearle Optician staff....................................The Other Blind Dude

LOCATION: Pearle Opticians

THE PLOT

I arrive for my contact lens appointment just as one of the staff is unlocking
the door. In perfect Dutch I say that I have an appointment at 10 o'clock - in
other words right now - and he says to go and take a seat upstairs.

I wait as staff go up and down the stairs past me, some say good
morning. I smile pleasantly back and return the greeting.

The contact lens guy is nowhere to be seen. I wait. I read. I read the same three weeks old Elsevier
article again (or was it HP De Tijd, I was so bored I can't recall).
Now it is 10:15. Just as I am about to go downstairs to ask one
of the other staff what the problem is, the contact lens guy comes down from
the next floor up.
He ignores me even though I am sitting outside his room,
even though there is no-one else in sight and the fact that I look up at him,
smiling a greeting. He continues to ignore me.

At 10:20, just as I am about to stand up and approach the contact lens guy, who
by this time has a phone to his ear, he asks me if I am here for contact
lenses. Stopping myself from giving a sarcastic reply I tell him about the
appointment.

"It's not possible!"

Bad service and the "If you don't like it go back to your home country" mentality.

Funny how a common Dutch answer to criticism is "you don't like it, then go back to where you come from." It says a lot about how some Dutch people (see: I underlined some) perceive themselves (as if the Dutch Golden Age didn't end centuries ago) and how they look at foreigners.

Superiority complex? Ignorance? Arrogance? Envy? Just plain racism? Dutch humor we don't understand? Bad hair day? Too much rain? I don't know, and to be honest it's completely irrelevant.

You want service? DIY.

Praxis is so big, you can spend hours in it. Not looking for something to buy, but for somebody to help you.
Reader and Exploding Expat Jeremy McMahon sends us his story from the Praxis of Evil.

Dutch Customer Service – An Oxymoron

by Murray de Schot
(published with kind permission)

Whilst many countries and cultures are renowned for providing high-degrees of Customer Service - from the obligatory American “Have a nice day” approach (said with such sincerity that you may even be fooled into thinking that they do actually give a damn!) to the doff-the-cap and tug-your-forelock English heritage of client concern, in Holland, does the concept of Customer Service even exist?

INVASION OF THE BRAIN DEAD WAITRESSES. Part 1: Cantine West, Westergasfabriek.

There are dozens of them. They all look the same. Same clueless smile. Same empty eyes. They probably come from the same planet. And they are bloody dangerous. It's Invasion of the brain dead waitresses.

UPC: "Your house doesn't exist"

bloodylekker sends us this very scary UPC horror story:

Just got off the phone to UPC. Surely they deserve a whole page of your site? It's taken them ten days to tell me I don't have an internet connection in my house, which is why I called them in the first place. They also told me 'your house doesn't exist. If it's not in our system then it's not there. Are you sure you don't live somewhere else?'

EXPLODING EXPATS: UNLEASH YOUR ANGER.

It's not poshiboll! It takes 10 to 12 weeks. We'll deliver it at your address between 7 am and 6 pm. Sorry, we don't do that. al onze medewerkers zijn in gesprek, blijft u aan de lijn. No, our restaurant is closed for lunch. No, you can't transfer money here, we'll send you a form.

Got more? Send your horror story by email and if it's relevant to the site we'll publish it (just click on the Exploding expats link on the right to view all submissions). Remember: you could save an expat!