March 04, 2004

Problems Come In Threes: The Advanced Stages of Russian Capitalism

After our hero's run in with the police, he decided it would be a good idea to buy a mobile telephone. When on tour of the different branches of the school our hero works for, our hero enlisted the help of someone from the school to buy him a phone. With the hero's luck, however, he received a defective phone. This phone appeared in many modes to work normally. However, in some menus it would say

1)Save
2)Delete
3) (87\&%(sjlsdf;_

After the weekend, the hero attempted to ecxhange this defective phone for a new one, and, after a trip to the embassy to replace his passport, went to the phone store. However, as the hero was soon to find out, Russians don't understand customer service.

I arrived at the store, and was shuffled around among many people--each of whom at first didn't understand the problem and secondly, couldn't understand what to do. Finally, after much looking and hmm.... (or in russian gmmmmm..or гмммммм) they told me that I had to go to the service center.

The service center could be dubbed the anti-service center as service was very limited. First, our hero was made to wait in line like at a bread queue in order to speak with that Russian version of a "Customer Service." Many people appeared to have been there for several hours.

After some time, I was allowed in to see a "anti-Customer Service Agent." As I walked in the room, sercurity came in to forcefully expel a quite irate daperly dressed businessman. It did not bode well for our hero.

The man helping our hero went through the same routine as the routine at the store--lot's of looking and not very much action. After about twenty minutes a manager was called. Finally after much discussion in broken Russian and more broken English, they agreed not to give our hero a new phone, but to repair it. This, by Russian standards, was very kind of them, as I was the only one to enter the Customer Service room the whole time I was there that appeared to be successful in getting them to do anything.

As a bonus, I also managed to get them to give me a free loaner phone from about 1991 that weighs at least two pounds. Best of all the whole experience only took two and half hours! Posted by Aaron at March 4, 2004 02:37 PM

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