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?
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7 Comments
at 8:30 pm - 11th May 2005 Permalink
Just got a letter each from both KPN and Planet. They basically say that they will be sending a modem in 4 WEEKS and once I have received it they will activate my account after 1 week. It also says that these times are estimates and they do not guarantee such a speedy service.
at 3:20 pm - 16th May 2005 Permalink
That is Utter BS, I cant belive that there is like no customer service. POS… Hope you are well, as usual the standard of your writting is excellent. flows very well and makes you feel like you are there being told a very funny story. Although the Dutch Phone Nazis dont sound fun. I hope they all get some sort of STI and fall over.
at 3:13 pm - 30th May 2005 Permalink
Did I mention I was part Dutch?
at 11:04 pm - 13th October 2005 Permalink
welcome to the club
http://www.itsnotpossible.nl
at 5:56 am - 25th October 2005 Permalink
I’ve been living in the netherlands for 3 years now, and I agree that the bad service is very popular, here.
I must say something in favor of KPN, though.
At least on my experience, they were always quick and reliable on service.
I had my internet connection fully working in 2 weeks (after getting the ISDN on: 10 days).
when I moved i brought my isdn+adsl with me in 4 days.
of course if you choose the cheap provider (Planet) you get what you pay for.
I choose xs4all, and despite the fact that I pay 90 Euros per month for a 20 Mb connection, I have no regret at all.
When they switched my connection from 8Mb to 20Mb, I had to wait less than 10 days.
When the service called me to ask me why I didn’t use my 20Mb connection, I told them I never got a modem, and got one in 48 hours.
I’ll always think that you get what you pay for.
Want service? pay.
Of course u’ll never be able to get a Parma Ham sandwich with no pesto inside, but that’s just because they think “pesto makes it italian”
ciao.ubi
at 10:43 am - 17th December 2007 Permalink
How many Dutch shop assistants does it take to change a register roll? All of them.
at 7:13 pm - 3rd April 2008 Permalink
Aha, the evil that is KPN! We arrived in the Netherlands in November. Were lazy and took our time to scope the best deal for phone and internet.
Queue trip to KPN shop to enquire, the guy immediately started running up the contract… Whoa, whoa, whoa! We say, we only want information today. His response: “It’s on the website” and off he scarpers to the next unwitting customer!
We found the best deal was Orange.
BUT WAIT! You can’t buy an Orange phone line unless you already have a KPN line.
So we return to KPN. “Oh yes, the phone can be ready in 10 days. I’ll just have a look…” starts looking at dates which are 20+ days on… “There, we’ll send our phone guy out to you in 30 days” We accept - not a lot else you can do, afterall!
So I wait in all day for this technician. Meanwhile cunning hubby borrows a work phone to get us started as the British phones we brought over don’t work anyway. Yes, all that KPN have done is flip a switch down the line - no technician! A whole day wasted!
As to ADSL, we returned to Orange, got the basic deal with half price for the first year (E8.95), the modem arrived when the shop assistant said it would (within two weeks, I had heard rumours of Orange struggling to keep up with demand and therefore taking longer, so was prepared to be patient).
Our only problem was that we were told all would spark up on the Friday. It didn’t. So we phoned customer service (gah! 20cent/minute!) on the Monday lunchtime, and they immediately spotted it had only been sparked that morning… queue immediately checking and finding them correct.
We love Orange!
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