Recently in Dutch Customer Service Category

Sweety is writing about the diner we had yesterday at Jazzclub Pannonica. It wasn't a real success. More about that (including pictures!) at Hello World It's Me, soon! If you're ever in The Hague, don't eat at Jazzclub Pannonica! We ended up having fun only because of the great people we went with.

There's just one thing that i have to add to me DCS (Dutch Customer Service) category. After diner, one of our friends walked up the stairs and the manager of the restaurant asked if she had enjoyed her meal. She awnsered "To be honest, not really." The guy just looked at her and walked away. Didn't even ask what was wrong!

Now that's DCS!

Hey, I’ve got myself a new category today! DCS, or Dutch Customer Service. It’s about all the amazing things we experience as a customer in The Netherlands. It’s one of the reasons we want to get out of here.

Maybe we just go to the wrong places, the C1000 grocery stores aren’t known for their service, they’re just very cheap. There’s always a long waiting line, boxed piled everywhere, employees walk into you or look at Sweety just a bit too long. Al things we can life with. We don’t expect much, really.

Today’s experience was…. well it was… special DCS….

First there’s this alcoholic guy behind us in line talking too loud on his cell phone about somebody embarrassing him. He wasn’t aware that he was embarrassing himself. That was funny but no DCS.

What happened at the register was really an great example of DCS (Dutch Customer Service). The cashier was apparently in a hurry; she pushed our groceries and signaled us to hurry up putting it in our bag. Yes, for al those in America, we always have to put our groceries in our bag ourselves. Don’t expect any help with that no matter what. And somewhere between the rice and the meat she dropped our box of Brinta on the floor. We didn’t notice, we were hurrying to save our other groceries.

When all the groceries had been pushed our way I went to pay, using my debit card. I entered my PIN and saw the cashier pick up our Brinta from the floor saying something like “this fell”. Sweety got the Brinta but just as I pressed “Yes” to accept the charge I heard Sweety say: “But now the box is broken, can I get a new one?”. I looked up and saw Brinta flakes swirl down. Knowing DCS I knew… here we go again. Sure enough the cashier said “No”. There was a silence for two seconds and the cashier said to Sweety: “I wanted to give it to you and then you dropped it.”, instead of giving us service she started lying and tried to put the blame on us! For a split second I imagined Sweety pulling the khimar of the cashiers head and using it to strangle her while I was getting a new box of Brinta. But wise as we are we hide those thoughts and use our intellect to solve things :) So Sweety explained that it was very bad customer service if we wouldn’t get a new Brinta. It seemed to be for deaf man ears. So Sweety just went and got a new box and the cashier said something about not caring if she did.

I really think we don’t expect much… when the cashier brakes our products before we pay and tells us after we pay we do expect new ones. Duh…..

Now that’s DCS!

"Dutch service representatives contain within them a microchip pre-programmed to say "not possible" at the slightest provocation."

Kevin Lowe is a Canadian Expat living in The Netherlands. He wrote a great story about how Dutch tend to say something is "not possible" when you ask for a product or service. As i mentioned before, the US standard level of service is one of the reasons we want to move to America. On Expatica there is also a call to turn shoddy customer service around!