“No”, said the male customer service phone operator with a campy, high-pitched voice with a contemptuous tone (hello, Mr Humphries, are you free?), “we sure won’t deliver or pick up *anything* broken weighing 27kg/60 lbs over a spiral staircase (escalating dismissive voice), “imagine, our staff could drop off that rickety stairs, and get hurt!”, totally ignoring that I might be living in a riverside penthouse, with my in-house staircase wide enough to handle twice his inflated ego. “But I’m physically challenged” I exclaimed as a desperate last resort, only to be confronted with what sounded like the ‘customer service operator’ clicking the ’start muzak’ button.
Living in the medieval downtown area of Antwerp with its cute and ever so romantic buildings may sound great to the casual tourist, but the reality of daily facing these in-house spiral staircases with no elevators to lift you to that great riverside view might quickly change your mind. Don’t click away yet: you’re virtually in the middle of a weird story about how a very mundane event (buying something) turned into a nightmarish experience, in a far away country where asking for ‘customer service’ is sometimes considered more offensive than engaging in open-air sex [anyway, don't try this while visiting Belgium
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My beloved 1001 function microwave died recently, a rather inconvenient incident as I was expecting guests.
The online choice in replacement appliances was large, but like I mentioned, no shop in Antwerp appeared willing to pick-up and deliver here. To cut a long story short: I dragged my broken 27kg/60 lbs oven down these never-ending revolving stairs to my car with the help of my s/o. It crashed, the oven I mean, although my dearest s/o also saw parts of the stairs he never knew existed. After a bumpy ride to the nearest “Best Buy Antwerp” outlet, nobody answered the “pick up here for instant service” phone, with a microphone equipped security guard (speaking hardly two words of Dutch, but hey, I’m multi-lingual) addressing me like I was a criminal. Numerous calls and 30 mins later an employee (you know, one of those showing advanced signs of burn-out) put a huge box right in front of my feet - placing it in my car trunk just 2m/yards away was visibly too much of an effort - swiped my credit card and closed the door. No “have a nice day”, no “enjoy the new oven”. Nothing. Belgium and customer service, it’s no marriage made in heaven.
It took me 1 full hour, assisted by my s/o, to drag the oven over all the revolving stairs to my home. I was in pain and totally exhausted. I’ve never lifted this much weight after my physical injury. And I shouldn’t have, ever.
When I finally opened and checked the heavy box it dawned on me that this didn’t look like the cutting edge space-age oven I had ordered and paid for. It wasn’t: those nice people over at ****** had given me a much cheaper model, although the receipt mentioned the correct appliance. I took one deep breath, picked up the phone and called ‘customer support’. “You must have caused this issue”, the campy Mr Humphries operator exclaimed in his high pitched voice. “Just bring back the *unopened* (!) box, without any signs of use, right now”. I couldn’t, wouldn’t and didn’t. Aaargh! It’s a pity you can’t hurt someone through the phone.
Do share your customer service horror stories, it will make me feel better
[image unrelated to the Antwerp horror mega-store]