I don’t really care why a business treats its customers well: because they have to (by law), or because they want to (for more business), or because they really do care. What matters is that they do provide good customer service. Two recent examples herein:
I promised y’all an update on the post about EU rules, and the verdict is in: they rock! You can review the whole story here, but the punch line was when you have airline travel delayed or cancelled and any part of your trip falls within the European Union, they have very strict rules on what the airline owes you.
I received a sizable compensation claim in one week from SAS for a flight they cancelled on us, even though they flew us to our destination later that same day. In effect, the flight was free. Our flight home from Gatwick (London) airport was also cancelled, leading to a three day stay in the English countryside. I filed the appropriate forms with Norwegian Air, and waited.
And waited. And waited. Two months to the day after I filed, they responded with an e-mail explaining that they would reimburse me the standard compensation (which amounted to a total of E1200, or about $1400 USD), but they would only pay for one day’s room and board, because they contended that we chose to stay in London that long and did not accept the first flight they could arrange. Harrumph, I say! They also refused to reimburse me for the second flight (which we ultimately took to get home).
This was more than a little aggravating. I stayed the extra days because they sent me a text message telling me their customer service was overwhelmed and I should arrange my own follow on flight and room to stay. If I had waited in line for four hours or so, they could have stuck me on any other airline that took me to LAX at any time, which was not what I was willing to do. Since I insisted on flying their airline, and their next flight availability was three days later, I felt the delay was justified. Unfortunately, my cell phone was stolen in the interim, and my text message history was gone, so I could not prove it. Argh! So I decided just to eat the extra costs of the rooms and meals.
However, I applied for the reimbursement of the second flight because their forms required me to list a dollar value for everything I was claiming. I thought, “well, I paid for the first trip, but only got halfway home, so they should cover the second trip.” Plus, how do I value part of a flight?
Regardless, I had paid for two separate trips home, and I only took one. I sent them back an e-mail asking for a refund of the part of the flight they cancelled, and this time they responded in three weeks and admitted, yes, they should have included this refund in the first place and thanks (not really) for bringing this matter to their attention so they could refund my credit card. Bottom line: after reimbursement and compensation, our flight home was free, too!
I had a chance to witness some good German-Mexican customer service this week, too. We went up to Guadalajara to have our VW Tiguan get its second annual service. Volkswagen is maniacal about maintenance, going so far as to forbid you using anything but their specially formulated antifreeze in your auto radiator. I managed to navigate the dealer’s website (en español) and make an appointment for our second annual service. We arrived, dropped off the car, and asked how long the service would take? “Five hours” the service manager responded. ¡Ay, caramba! But he offered us a taxi (gratis) anywhere we wanted to go, so we went to the nearest mall, did some shopping, got lunch, saw a movie (The Wife with Glenn Close, in English with subtitulos en español), walked back to the dealership (it was very close) about an hour early and they rushed to complete the paperwork and get us back on the road. We could have just stayed at the dealer and had espresso from the coffee machine or popcorn from the popcorn maker and surfed the internet.
The VW dealer was very thorough, explaining everything they did in Spanglish so we understood, cleaning the car from top to bottom, and doing an inventory to show that everything we left in the car was still there. Total cost was around $150 USD. Muy bien.
Both these stories are relevant to expat life. The first reminds one that the rules vary from place to place, and it literally pays to know a little about the rules where you are travelling. The second is more mundane, but something as simple as getting a car serviced can be fraught with difficulty if you don’t speak the language, don’t understand the culture, or aren’t flexible. We all regularly experience poor customer service; makes the good service stand out that much more.