My hunt for new glasses came to a successful end on Friday, when Female J and Male J (of Guinea Pig fame!) helped me pick out cute little Michael Kors frames. After discussing everything under the sun with the salesman - including my "excellent" Arabic (!) - I was told that my glasses would be ready for pick up the next day. Seeing as how I was in an area of town that I rarely frequent, and sure as heck wasn't going to go to two days in a row, I asked him to please send them to the branch closer to my home. This, I was told, would not be a problem.
Today, two days later, I phoned the branch close to home to inquire if my new baby had arrived. Not surprisingly, they hadn't. A series of phone calls later, it was established that my glasses had in fact arrived from the workshop, but there was a "problem with the delivery man." I think this roughly translates into "Crap, I forgot to tell the factory to send your order to Branch X." Not wanting to pick a fight (shocking!), I told the sales rep from Friday that all was fine, but I needed the glasses no later than Tuesday because I was traveling the next day (so I lied a little...sue me. [Please don't, actually.]). He assured me that I could pick up my glasses tomorrow, "begad," (seriously) after 3 pm.
No more than two minutes later, I received another phone call saying that AT THE LATEST, "begad," my glasses would be ready on Tuesday night. GAH! Fine, fine. Pick your battles, right?
This, however, was the icing on the cake. At the end of the conversation, the salesman says:
Ahem 7aga matiz3aleesh minny. (The most important thing is that you aren't upset with me).
NO! The most important thing is that I get my glasses, DAMMIT! Crippling customer service is nothing new to this country, but this is just getting ridiculous. Maybe I need to go around yelling all the time. This seems to work for other people. The fact that I look eight probably won't help though.
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4 comments:
I've read something about the customer service in Egypt in another blog: http://mabadali.blogspot.com/ under the title "غاية النتانة في أصول الضمان والصيانة" I think you're luckier than many!
O, this is by no means in my top five, or ten even, customer service stories. Just the most recent.
I keep hearing that this strategy works, especially from women. I advocate the yelling technique, probably because I have noticed that my dry sarcasm approach doesn't work.
yeah i would have done tons of shouting. and why ARE egyptians so concerned about your za3al level, when they haven't done anything to dispel your za3al? i'm constatnly shouting at people that aywa, ana za3lana. ahhhh!
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