Upon arrival in Germany, you will learn quickly that the Germans hate customer service, because German companies even advertise on television to tell you how much they want to avoid having to deal with you, and Germans still do business with them.
Your first task in setting up a new life in Germany may be going to the Deutsche Telekom to set up phone and Internet services. When you go to the T-Point you will be met at the door by one or two attractive young employees who will ask you what you would like to do, and after you explain to these friendly people your communication needs, they will tell you to go stand in line behind everyone else. These two people could easily be replaced by a sign that says, “Welcome, please take a number,” but that would triple the amount of employees on duty that actually do something for you, which is unacceptable.
Once you have your telephone set up, which in 2008 still takes somewhere between a week and a month in Germany to flip that switch, you are ready to deal with other companies that don’t want to talk to you. You will learn this because they will tell you right in the advertisement that calling them will cost you 15 cents per minute, so the longer they put you on hold, the more you get to pay for their bad customer service. The more inept their service reps are, the more you have to pay to do business with them.
Since nearly every company in Germany charges you to talk to them, it is an undeniable fact that the Germans hate customer service.
deutsche Übersetzung für Astrid ein/ausblenden
Moin Moin Astrid,
Deutsche hassen Kundenservice
Nach der Ankuft in Deutschland werden Sie schnell feststellen, dass die Deutschen Kundenservice verachten, weil deutsche Firmen sogar im Fernsehen dafür Werbung machen, wie sehr sie versuchen, sich nicht mit Ihnen befassen zu müssen und Deutsche machen trotzdem mit ihnen Geschäfte.
Die erste Aufgabe, die sich beim Einrichten des neuen Lebens in Deutschland stellt, wird vermutlich der Gang zur Deutschen Telekom sein, um ein Telefon und Internet zu beantragen. Wenn Sie zum T-Punkt gehen, werden Sie von einem oder zwei jungen attraktiven Angestellten an der Tür begrüsst, die Sie fragen werden, was Sie gerne möchten, und nachdem Sie diesen freundlichen Menschen Ihre Kommunikations-Bedürfnisse erklärt haben, werden diese Ihnen sagen, dass Sie in der Schlange hinter allen anderen stehen und warten sollen. Diese 2 Leute könnnten leicht durch ein Schild ersetzt werden, auf dem steht “Willkommen, bitte ziehen Sie eine Nummer”, aber das würde die Anzahl der anwesenden Mitarbeiter, die tatsächlich etwas für Sie tun, verdreifachen, was inakzeptabel ist.
Sobald Ihr Telefon angeschlossen ist, was in Deutschland im Jahre 2008 immer noch zwischen einer Woche und einem Monat dauert, um den Hebel umzulegen, sind Sie bereit dazu, mit anderen Firmen zu verhandeln, die auch nicht mit Ihnen sprechen wollen. Sie werden dies lernen, denn sie werden Ihnen schon in der Werbung erzählen, dass es 15 Cent pro Minute kosten wird, dort anzurufen, also je länger sie Sie in die Warteschleife stecken, desto mehr dürfen Sie für diesen schlechten Kundenservice bezahlen. Je ungeschickter die Servicemitarbeiter sind, desto mehr müssen Sie dafür bezahlen, mit ihnen Geschäfte zu machen.
Da beinahe jede Firma in Deutschland Sie dafür bezahlen lässt, mit ihnen zu sprechen, ist es eine unbestreitbare Tatsache, dass die Deutschen Kundenservice hassen.
Auf Wiederhören,
John
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August 17th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Those “service numbers” (as their are called in Germany (area code 01805)) cost €0.14 (¢21 US) per minute only from a landline. From your cellphone you pay up to €0.87 ($1.28 US) per minute, depending on your cell provider.
Furthermore, the company that offers service over that “service number” will be paid around €0.03 per minute by the telephone company. (Only when their negotiations were successful, of course.)
There is a website that will tell you an alternative number, if available, which is a normal landline number or even an 0800 “freephone” number:
http://0180.info/
Tobias
August 17th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
you got something wrong… you dont pay 15ct to talk to telekom (or whomever you need) you only will talk to someone completely different.
August 17th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Talking to Telekom is free of charge. Their service is competent. (My experience.) All other is true. Sniff.
August 17th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Sprecht doch einfach deutsch miteinander… Oder wollt ihr euch nur im englischsprachigen Raum profilieren?
August 17th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Well Richard, as we all know ALL americans are stupid and ignorant, so they wouldn’t understand us if we did.
So we choose to speak english, increasing the amount of people we can bother with our pointless comments.
August 17th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Oh yeah,
I had some fun with telecommunication companies the last three weeks.
The situation was simple, I made a mobile phone contract and I wanted to keep my phone number, which was owned by another provider.
That happened three weeks ago and that “number-migrating” didn’t happen yet. But I had fun with these guys, two extra visits at the shop, one visit at the shop from the old provider, two calls with customer-care from the old provider.
[expletive] I love this System.
Editor’s note: We agree with your sentiment, but would have expressed it in a way our FCC would approve of.
August 17th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Are you saying you still have to physically visit a telecom laden to get your phone hooked up like 20 years ago?
Where you fill out an application in order to in order to be connected?
Wow!
Let’s look at phone service in the USA.
(or services like cable or internet )
After you find out your phone service provider for your area, let’s say AT&T, you call them and let them know that you need new service.
You tell them you want voicemail, caller ID , 3way,call waiting, call block which are pretty much standard and free of charge. Maybe you need an international plan, and you add that one too. It will give you unlimited calls to Germany for 1.8 cents a minute and runs you about 15 bucks. The rep will then ask you I’d you are interested in dsl internet,if you take it, you will be fortunate to get it for a special price of 20$ a month for the first 6 months.
The entire combined monthly phone/dsl bill will be 54$ a month. The rep will then wish you a nice day and thank you for your business.15 minutes later your phone works and it will take a day or two to have the dsl hooked up.
The only disadvantage is that I didn’t burn a lot of calories during this process,and now have to worry about becoming a fat German due to increased convenience.
Mixxy
August 17th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
All those charges bring me to another point: I´m trying to open an account in the US since I am going to move there for a year but I don´t seem to be able to find a bank that does not charge a fee for incoming (!) money transfers.. btw, although I find it kind of uneffective to write checks and havin to send them per mail, I do understand why that is the case..
I guess we Germans got so fed up with customer service that at least we got free online banking
August 17th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
You got one thing wrong in that post. You only pay let’s say 15 cents a minute for the “customer service” phone call after somebody picked up the phone and actually talks to you.
By law they are not allowed to charge you for still waiting in line.
Though the other things are so true, gotta “love” this country
August 17th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Deutsche Bahn charges you while you’re on hold. At least they did two years ago.
August 17th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Sadly you missed one point in your article.
Regulary you have to stand in the T-point waiting line for more than one time.
The first time you tell them what you want and everything seems fine. Some days later you will get a letter where you will see that they totaly mixed up you order. Like giving you an entry in the phonebook even if you don’t want to or like opening an DSL account even if you told them that you do not want to have one from the Telecom.
Than you have to go there for a minimum of two more times and you can be sure that if one mistake is fixed another one will appear.
August 17th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
“could easily be replaced by a sign that says, ‘Welcome, please take a number,’”
Funny, yet true, my local T-Punkt does just that.
August 17th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Hey, that’s unfair - Telekom was founded by the government, so you can’t really expect them to have costumer service (or do you also want the citizen office of your city to open at times when people who are not unemployed could attend, too?).
@Mixxy: 54 dollars??? Well, they are robbing you. German provider Alice gives me DSL and phone flatrate (if this is a legal English term) for twenty bucks less. And an euro may be more expensive as a dollar but the purchasing power still equals…
August 17th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
There’s a great book by a Japanese management consultant that calls it what it is: “Die kundenfeindliche Gesellschaft”. Here’s the amazon.de listing for anyone who’s interested: http://www.amazon.de/Die-kundenfeindliche-Gesellschaft-Erfolgsstrategien-Dienstleister/dp/3612264915/
August 17th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
@ MuGo……no….they are not really robbing me,because unlike you ,my local phone calls are free and I added the international plan which I mentioned in my first comment to the all over bill.
August 17th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
And yes we do have free online banking,actually I can’t even come up with a bank that doesn’t offer it.
On top of that my bank gives me free ATM charges,which means that no matter what ATM I use,at the end of the month I get the ATM fees back.
Mixxy
August 17th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Spot-on, John. Thanks for that post.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Well, even if Germans hate customer service (which I’m not really convinced they do, they might just not feel entitled to demand it), at least they do complain about the Telekom, a truly byzantine empire of lost numbers and kafkaesque delays.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Has anyone ever heard of a positive report about interacting with Telekom whatsoever?
Everybody i told my tale of woe told me at least one in return…
August 18th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Best thing happened when I had to call ARCOR because DSL wasn’t working. They put me on hold for 15 minutes and the f***ing voice kept telling me that I could, instead of calling them, conveniently use their online service to get everything I want free of charge. Drove me nuts.
We deducted the charge for this particular phone call from the bill and they didn’t complain.
August 18th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Anonymous:
Yes, never had any problems with Telekom.
August 18th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Deutsche Telekom are awful, but they have never:
1) Charged me for other people’s calls (Alice)
2) Refused to allow me to upgrade to 16mbit DSL because “I download too much” (Arcor)
3) Taken four months to release my line after I canceled my service to change providers (1&1)
4) Erroneously canceled my account and then taken 6 weeks to reconnect me when I moved apartments (Alice again)
August 18th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Hello!
I have to agree on the lack of service in Germany, especiall in the telco industry. The Deutsche Telekom still has a lot of old long-term employees dating back from the monopoly times, which gives them the we-dont-care-attitude, though things are growing tough for them and I have to say service is improving.
And I have to say, I lived in the US, England and Venezuela, and I always had my difficulties with the telcos.
By the way, if you’re a customer, it is called Terrorkom not Telekom …
August 18th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
@Anonymous: Flat rate means all national calls are free, not just the local calls. I have a ISDN & DSL & National + European flat rate for less than 40 EUR.
August 18th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
you are correct. Sadly
August 18th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
@TabulaRasa:
Liest hier wirklich ernsthaft ein Amerikaner mit? Wohl kaum, sämtliche Links führen auf deutsche bzw. deutschsprachige Sites. Es wirkt nach außen einfach ein wenig lächerlich, wenn ein Haufen Deutscher sich auf Englisch unterhalten.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
The Germans don’t hate customer service. They like ultra low prices!
“Ich bin doch nicht blöd!”
Thats the real problem. If you want ultra low prices, you can’t expect any service. Germans like customer services. But only for free! If someone has a cheaper offer, Germans will buy there, whatever crappy customer service they will give them.
So any company only sell you cheap things with crappy customer services. Personally I hate it. Nowadays you can’t buy anything with acceptable customer services. In Germany it’s named “Aldisierung”. Thats also the reason why you have to put a coin into your shopping card, so that you bring it back to the station and the reason why no one would bag your items.
Anything for ultra low prices!
I hope you understand me. I rarely write something in english.
August 18th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
That’s all you got?
August 18th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Richard:
Germany 66.4%
United States 16.8%
Norway 11.9%
Other countries 4.8%
so sieht die Nutzerverteilung laut alexa.com aus:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/nothingforungood.com
btw, warum gibt es so viele Leser aus Norwegen?
August 18th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Hi Statistik,
If you want to know the real stats, the countries that visit this site are as follows:
1. Germany
2. United States
3. Austria
4. Switzerland
5. United Kingdom
6. Canada
7. France
8. Netherlands
9. Sweden
10. Australia
Norway comes in at 18th place. I have access to all the data, whereas Alexa has only a small sampling, which isn’t perfectly accurate.
It makes sense that most readers are located in Germany since this site is about Germany, but that doesn’t say anything about their nationality or ability to speak German. I would bet 90% of regular readers are comfortable in both languages, which is why I said I would publish comments in either language.
So comment in whichever you prefer, I don’t care.
August 18th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Well, looks like not Germans hate (receiving) customer service, but German companies hate providing it.
August 19th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Maybe Germans hate paying for something as useless as customer service and therefore they don’t get it. So yes, we hate customer service.
August 19th, 2008 at 8:04 am
@Marcus
I have to agree, Germans rather walk longer, wait longer or have less service if they save a few Pfennings/Eurocents.
We do like customer service, but we don’t see it as essential, we are more bare product concerned.
Thats why my typical shopping run and that of many Germans are to buy milk at Aldi, toilet paper at Lidl, meat at Reichelt/Tengelmann. Why?
To save money…
August 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Ein weiteres Problem ist, daß viele Unternehmen “Service” mit “aggressivem Verkaufen” gleichsetzen. Wenn jemand z.B. einen Telefonanschluß im T-Punkt bestellt wird einem immer ein teures, großes Paket mit allerlei Extras und langer Laufzeit aufgeschwatzt. Den “Call-Plus” Tarif mit 30 Tagen Mindestlaufzeit und niedriger Grundgebühr gibt es nur wenn man ihn kennt und beharrlich Nachfragt.
Ebenso bei der Post. Ich werde fast jedesmal wenn ich dort z.B. eine Sendung abhole, gefragt, ob ich denn “schon ein Postbank Konto” hätte. Nein - und ich möchte auch keins!
I hate such customer “service”.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
“Kundendienst” ist ja, wie der Herr Nuhr so gut bemerkte, schwierig. Besteht aus zwei Worten, die den meisten Verwaltungsstellen/unternehmen fremd sind: Kunde und Dienst
August 19th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Genau! Kein Wunder, daß man auch sagt “Servicewüste” Deutschland! Ich selber hatte Probleme mit meinem Telefonanbieter, dessen Nummer von meinem Anschluß nicht erreichbar ist (?!!!??). Habe diese dann für 1 Euro/min. von einem anderen Anschluß angerufen. Der freundliche Mitarbeiter am Telefon fragte mich dann doch total entgeistert, warum ich nicht von zu Hause anrufen würde….
Ähhh, wie bitte, wenn ich 1. Probleme mit meinem Anschluß habe und 2. die Nummer von dem Anschluß nicht erreichbar ist?! Soviel dazu…
August 20th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Yea, Martin et al…gotta hate getting your phone “aggressively” turned on the same/next day versus the next week/month.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Well, concerning the statistics I for one am pushing the Germany to the top spot though I’m an expat.
Das bedeutet nicht, dass ich nicht auf Deutsch schreiben koennte, nur dass es etwas komisch aussieht wenn man es auf einer amerikanischen Tastatur schreibt weil die meisten Sonderzeichen fehlen. Besides, I’m still a little faster in English.
As for “customer service”… the Telekom tried to charge me for three months where my phone wasn’t connected. Arcor tried to get me into a hugely expensive flatrate plan (99 Euros!), which for a person who mainly uses VoIP phoning would have been the worst thing ever.
Alice (or Hansenet), finally, provided me with a simple plan that fits my budget and was activated the day after ordering it. I’m quite happy with this provider, but as someone remarked I had to know my way through the maze of options and plans, otherwise I’d have gotten ripped off.
I’m quite annoyed in supermarkets when people titter at me for taking too long to pack my own purchases… Excuse me for having grown up in a convenience-oriented environment.
As for being included in the telephone register… I kind of flipped at that and threatened suing for damages since this registration provided an opening for a whole legion of telemarketers to target my phone number. I finally changed that and got free service for three months as well as an apology and a letter of cease-and-desist to all the telemarketing companies that had my name on their list. I’ve learned that Yes, there is customer service in Germany- if you push hard enough.
(also, most Germans seem to be afraid to death of lawyers. It’s a very good way of getting customer service to threaten bringing one into the equation!)
August 24th, 2008 at 4:58 am
“I’m quite annoyed in supermarkets when people titter at me for taking too long to pack my own purchases… Excuse me for having grown up in a convenience-oriented environment.”
well … they are convenience oriented too, oriented towards not being inconvenienced by you.
contrary to to popular american beliefs the human condition does not default to the american way.
August 24th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Amen.
It’s not just the T-Kom, it’s the personnel in almost any shop that makes you want to apologize for disturbing them. It’s bad enough that for some stuff I actually still have to go to physical places (where there are ridiculous opening hours and other customers who make me wait in line), but then getting snide comments from the employees is really the worst.
Shortly after I returned from the US - and was still used to customer service - I made the mistake of asking a employee at our local KARSTADT for something I couldn’t find in the shelves. She snapped at me, asking me if I didn’t see she was on the phone … going over her grocery list first and then over her date the evening before. I got so mad I reached over the counter and unplugged her phone and when she went nuts I had her call her boss. After I explained the situation to him it was very satisfying to see him walk her off into an extra room and then hear muffled voices, indicating he was not very pleased with her attitude.
Over time, unfortunately, I have come to accept that in Germany you won’t get the same quality of customer service as in the US. Unfortunate, but true.
August 24th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Funny how the Germans, espeicially Bundestagsabgeordnete, expect customer service in the US when they come over, isn’t it?
http://www.thelocal.de/13773/20080818/
August 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
No, they’re not people … they’re politicians. They don’t live on our plane of existence.
August 26th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
So I ate a jar of yogurt today which has a deposit of 0.15 EUR (0.21 USD) on it and you’re asked to rinse out the jar, which you have to because the “reverse vending machine” won’t take it back otherwise.
I know there are some states in the USA that have those laws, but would any American wash out a jar to get 20 Ct back? This could be done by the supermarket, couldn’t it?
(I even wash out jars that I’ll throw in the glass recycling container later, I’m so stupid.)
August 27th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I think Germans value saving money over convenience. In the U.S. we are willing to pay a bit extra for good service, but in Germany they would rather save a little money by renting carts, bringing their own bags, and bagging their own groceries.
Just got through reading all of the posts and had some good laughs. I love the sarcasm and could totally relate to a lot of these things after living in Dresden for a year. I will have to read some of these to my German! He has lived in the U.S. for a long time and can appreciate the joke.
Looking forward to more!
August 30th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
And who’s got the worst customer service in Germany? It’s definitely Microsoft. Paid 4 Euros to get an installation of Vista working again after upgrading hardware. They have a free “activation hotline” but the damn key they gave me didn’t work. The problem with MS is that you need them and they know it! Don’t get me wrong. I don’t usually use software from MS. I just need to make sure my applications are running fine on all operating systems.
By the way there sometimes is a “take a number”-sign. It usually consists of a number tied to the fuse of a plastic model of a fragmentation grenade. It’s so funny I could cry.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Definitely true about the lack of customer service in Germany, especially Telekom. By the way, T-Mobile in the US is owned by them and their service is great. But T-Kom in Germany is truly kafkaesque.
As far as being penny pincher is concerned, I think this is true to a certain extent. But behind this is a mentality of efficiency and optimization. It is just not necessary to have someone pack your bags in the supermarket if you can do it yourself while your items get pushed over the laser by the cashier. I get annoyed when I see here how people just stand there and like being served instead of taking things into their own hands. This is noticeably the case for lower class/ lower income folks.
The interesting thing here is the discrepancy between the attitudes. Americans often balk at the German/European welfare system and say we are assisted and we should take charge of our own well-being. Whereas Europeans shake their head in disbelief when they see a social system from the 19th century still being in place in the US today, but where assistance in daily life tasks (e.g. ordering phone service or packing bags) is taken for granted and most of these tasks are streamlined by specialists to be really idiot proof.
There is a much bigger cultural divide than what I believed when I came here in 2001.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
Not only we hate the “customer service” (better name here would be “customer defence”), but the customer service personnel hates the customer, too.
They hide, if they can, they flee if they see a customer in the far.
If you catched one, they ignore you, if you’re lucky, otherwise they insult you.
Reason is our near-socialistic system, where you not hire a worker, but have to adopt him, with no real chance of firing jerks.
October 31st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
No, Germans don’t hate customer service - they just don’t have alternatives to dealing with companies showing the behaviour mentioned above
October 31st, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I can see how it may appear like Germans don’t like customer service. But consider this: If you grew up and lived you whole life there, how would you know that customer service even existed? I only learned about it after I moved to the US.
October 31st, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Moin
Germans do not go to church (if I was a child I considered going to church oldfashioned, modern people do not go to church)
Germans pray to the god of efficiency, so they have to be honest, it saves time, it avoids misunderstandings.
Customer service is a luxury, it takes time, it decreases profit.
Having no customers decreases profit too.
This problem seems to be unsolvable.
German companys like the money but they do not like their customers. Unsolvable too.
If you have a product like a Miele washing machine then you do not need any customer service, such a product hardly fails.
Internet access or a telephone is much more complicated and therefore it could fail easier.
The german mind is good in inventing, building and selling a piece of hardware, the success is directly measurable.
If you put a girl on a telephone line to speak to customers in a polite and friendly way then the success is not directly measurable.
Germans do not like that.
November 12th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
But even these have nothing on KabelBW. When I first came here these guys asked me what kind of digital receiver I owned so they could send me an appropriate card. Then, when it didn’t work they tried to sell me a new receiver. I didn’t want a new receiver so they tried to take me to court for not paying for the lousy service they couldn’t deliver in the first place.
If it was just lousy customer service I could live with it, but they have moved onto something far more sinister than keeping you on the line to earn from the call.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Germany is truly SERVICE HELL!
I´ve had a professor of economics who wanted to buy a real expensive new Mercedes but the dealer used all of his talent that he dont have too give away HIS crown of cars. Frustratet he owned a Lexus and thought why he worked so hard to save his money for that graet day. After this expericen he really seemd unmotivatet in his Job.
Strange? But that´s how it´s written!
March 10th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
German only, Volker Pispers, Dienstleistung (customer service):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im3dJp30-b8
April 15th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
the world dislike america. we dont want your [crap] and waste
Editor’s note: … and we don’t want your naughty language