Dutch customer service?
The Dutch customer service philosophy is simple and elegant: “that is not possible”. I take back everything I ever said about Telstra, compared to anything Dutch they are Gods of efficient and friendly service.
This rant was sparked by our need to get ADSL. Currently we are stuck on dialup and both of us need broadband to be able to do our work. We called the phone company (KPN) to connect our phone on the 27th of April. During the same call they advised us that the fastest way to get ADSL connected was to go through them. It would take two weeks instead of the usual three. Time being of the essence, I signed up through them for one of their resellers, planet.nl. The phone line will be connected the next day, our modem and welcome pack will arrive within a week and we will be connected to ADSL in two weeks.
Our phone line was connected 5 days later.
Today is exactly two weeks since that call, and no modem has arrived. We called planet.nl to find out what was going on, they had us in the system (at least) but were waiting on KPN. They connected us to KPN. Yes, we are on the system, they can see that we applied on the 9th of May, and we will be connected on schedule in 3 weeks or so. Aargh! To clarify, the 3 weeks doesn’t start until our phone was connected and the PHONE COMPANY was not notified of that until the 9th of May. We pointed out that we were connected long before then, surely the phone company knew that? Can we talk to a supervisor?
“Dat kan niet” (that is impossible). Apparently they do not have supervisors at KPN, and the person on the phone (Barbara Groen) does not have a boss. I guess she is the CEO of KPN.
She gave us her name and a contact phone number, and suggested we call back in one week if nothing had happened, and then terminated the call. I immediately called the number: it was a fake number.
So I have that familiar feeling, making me a bit homesick. That Telstra feeling. My chest is tight, my hands are shaking, I want to hurt things. When I complain about this to a Dutch person they don’t understand. What had I expected to happen?