Customer Service ... What's That??

Let me start with the positives here.

One very positive thing about customer service in Chile is that most offices will bend over backwards for families with small children, pregnant women, and the elderly. Even the always-busy and often-complicated International Police building has a special office for those who fit into this category, which allows you to circumvent the otherwise endless line of waiting people. The Metro has special seats designated for the same reason (although they are somewhat pointless when you are sandwiched in like sardines and can't move even if you wanted to!) The airlines in Chile still do preferential boarding, unlike those in the States. These are all wonderful things.

But ... otherwise customer service in NON-EXISTENT in Chile. I will tell you all about the recent incident that has brought this to the forefront of my very frustrated mind, but it is not the first incident. (The first incident was the telephone company who despite monthly calls to request our bill - and monthly assurances that the problem had been corrected even though it had not - continued to mail it to the wrong address because the technicians who installed our service ignored me when I pointed out that it needed to be corrected, thus resulting in our telephone and internet services being cut off several times over the course of this past year.)

The incident that has pushed me over the edge, however, is our recent loss of nearly $500 desperately needed dollars to the ATM machine in our local supermarket.

On Saturday, as is our usual monthly custom, my husband attempted to withdraw funds for paying our bills. (Have I mentioned in a previous post that we must pay all of our bills in cash, in person here?) Although initially the machine whirred as though it were processing his request, in the end an error message flashed on the screen and it provided neither money nor a receipt. However, upon returning home and checking our online banking account we discovered that the money was actually debited even though we didn't receive a dime.

Here is where things got very upsetting and very, very frustrating.

A phone call to the grocery store resulted in their denial of responsibility.

A phone call to one of the banks listed on the ATM resulted in their denial of responsibility and their suggestion to call our US bank.

A phone call to our US bank resulted in their pointing the finger back at the Chilean bank (which made sense to me, since the ATM is in Chile and the bank listed on it is in Chile - but what do I know?)

A phone call back to the first bank resulted in their assurance that within 24 hours the situation would resolve itself.

A phone call two days later resulted in the bank's insistence that even though their name and number were on the ATM machine, it was not their responsibility. My efforts to speak to the original representative were denied and my requests to speak with a supervisor were rebuffed.

A subsequent phone call resulted in another false assurance that within 24 more hours the situation would resolve itself.

A visit in person to a bank representative resulted in a polite interaction with ultimately the same results as above.

Does anyone else see a problem with this? The ATM had their name on it. It had their logo on it. It had their customer service number on it. What happened to "the customer is always right" and "if it's our mistake, we'll take responsibility?" AAAAAARGGHHH!!

We are now waiting on the results of a letter of dispute faxed to our US bank, which according to them will take 30-60 days to investigate. Unfortunately that may do us some good in one month or two.

But it doesn't do us any good right now. *sigh*