British customer service is much like Dutch cuisine—an idea, a concept, but incapable of being experienced as it does not, in fact, actually exist. Essentially, there are people on the other end of the phone line who will argue with you and then point you down one of two options: cancel with us and pay an outrageous fee, or stay with us, be trapped with us for another year and still pay an outrageous fee. Right. The UK is extremely exciteable by contracts. They can’t be trusted to fulfill their jobs in a satisfactory manner so everyone must be trapped into contracts and direct debits in order to keep the company afloat. Very sad, and yet a very accurate reflection of British business and the British culture in general.
There is no excellence in Britain. There are extremes of all sort, but in my year here, I have seen no example of excellence. We have extreme darkness, extreme wealth, extreme drinking, but no where is there extreme excellence. No excellent food, originality, creativity, innovation, fashion, service. There is some decent music here, it must be said. However, with everything else being so mediocre to bad, the standards for quality are so low that no one can even imagine anything better. Add to this the reserved British character and nothing can even be improved as no one will demand it. Here in the UK we have poor plumbing, inferior appliances, a joke of a transportation system, non-existent service, shockingly bad food, poorly crafted clothing and yet everyone queues up to pay exorbitant prices for it all.
Posted on Saturday, 28 June 2008