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!"

When Out of Stock gets Out of Control.

After six years in the Out of Stock capital of Europe I heard all the excuses you can imagine.
"Well, there's not a lot of space in Holland, you know?"
"Yes, usually we have it but with the holidays..."
"Jaaa, it's very difficult to find it."
"Jaaaa, it's custom made, you know. So we have to build it for you."

But I still have to hear the one and only honest excuse: "We don't give a shit about customers and service. We just want to save us trouble and a few cents".

Is Jencikova still outside the Eurozone?

Remember the shop that took one third of a year to deliver my couch? I wonder how long it will take them to realize that Amsterdam has been in the Eurozone since 2002.

Last year (more than 2 years after the Death of the Guilder) I decided to get a new fabric to cover my couch. I went to the shop, chose the fabric and asked two questions: when and how much.
I am not even talking about the "when" part (suffice to say that it took a quarter of a year to make and deliver five pieces of fabric. Even silkworms are faster).
But when I asked how much, the answer was something more than 3500 Euros.
From that moment on, the conversation went more or less like that:

Me - More than 3000 Euros?? But I paid my couch around 3000 Guilders, which is half of that price. Are you sure??

Dutch dude - Oh yes. Price went up in two years in Holland, you know?

Me - Yes but the fabric can't cost twice as much as the couch. It's ridiculous.

Dutch dude - That's the price it says in the catalogue. Look.

Me - Are you sure your catalogue is not still in guilders?

Dutch dude - Ah ah. Of course. This is a new catalogie. It's in Euros.

Me - Can you please double-check? Ask somebody else?

Dutch dude - One moment, if you want I can call our supplier.

(10 mins phone conversation in Dutch goes here - including a few laughters)

Me - So?

Dutch dude (smiling, amused, not sorry) - Well.... yes, you were right, the prices in the catalogue are in Guilders.

Does that mean that for more than two years Jencikova was actually selling furniture at twice the price?
I don't even want to know.
Don't want to go there.
And for your own good, don't go there either.

Where have all the flyers gone?

In your mailbox, of course. Tons a day.

One aktie here, one op=op there, a coupon for a 2 cents reduction, the start of the sale of the century (that usually means a 3 cents reduction)....

The Dutchies, it's not a secret, love their reductions. And yes, I admit, I like them too, when they are not an insult to human intelligence. But how difficult is it to get hold of those queen-blessed reduced items?
As our reader Tanja found out, most of the time it's - you guessed it - not possible....

Have you received your Kruidvat ad for the €69 Sanyo digital camera, that does everything? Then you're standing in front of the door on the starting day of the ad, doors open, you race in - none are available.
 
"When do you expect any?"
"We aren't, op is op."
"But, it's 8am, first day of the sale, you haven't sold any to be 'op'."
Shrug.
 

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.

Het Bad. Het Very Bad.

One of the good things about buying a couch at Jencikova is that when they finally deliver it to you (after one third of a year) you can sit comfortably on it and wait for another half a year for the bed you ordered at Het Bed, on the Bilderdijkstraat. "Het" is the Dutch anagram of "The" and "Bed" is what you won't be sleeping in for six months.
A serious candidate to the 2005 itsnotpossible.nl Worst Service Award. After 5 months I started to go there and complain every single week. I even asked a lawyer to write them a letter. Nothing. It's Invasion of the Dutch body snatchers again: big clueless smile, no willing to help whatsoever and this amazing ability to make you feel like YOU are the guilty one, not them.
One advice: whenever you buy some furniture, make sure they write on paper the expected delivery date and ask what your rights are if the delivery gets delayed forever.
Then go to Ikea and buy a bed there.

Monday. 4 pm. Local Albert Hein. No bread. (Update)

Ok, apparently I spelled Hein wrong - should have been Heijn.
If you spell Albert Heijn correctly and you google it you won't find any dirty toilet picture on page 2. I am so sorry. I really apologize.
You just find this picture on page 9.

How many people does it take to build a couch?

I don't care how many people it takes, at Jencikova it just takes too long. How can you wait 15 weeks (that's almost four months, one third of a year) to get a couch delivered to your place? Of course they won't tell you when you order it. What they will tell you is that it "normally" takes 8 to 10 weeks, which is already a long time but still realistic (they have to find a cow, kill the cow, make some leather, wait for a few trees to grow, etc). What they don't tell you is that at the end of those 10 weeks you get a letter saying that due to some problems blah blah blah delivery has been delayed of another 4 weeks.
Welcome to Jencikova. Bad bad service, Menheer Jencikova. And that's only part 1. Stay tuned for Jencikova's own Guilders to Euros policy.

Monday. 4 pm. Local Albert Hein. No bread.

If you google "Albert Hein" and you click on the "Images" link, you get no more than five pages of results, which is far more than what this Dutch supermarket deserves. On page two, you get this picture, which actually should be the first result of page one, since it really represents the supermarket situation in this country.
With due respect for pre-Cold War Bulgaria, that's exactly the time and place that comes into your mind when you cross those infamous AH doors.
Where else would bread be a luxury hard to find product? Where else would you find empty shelves instead of baguettes and rolls? And I am not talking about "5 minutes before closing time on a Saturday" empty shelves. I am talking about mid-afternoon of the first day of the week.
It's a scandal, and everybody seems so brainwashed that you feel you're in a Dutch remake of "invasions of the body snatchers."