Monday, October 26 2009
I thought I would try AGAIN to hold off on the negative comments and try to restrain myself from posting for awhile. I did have a very nice surprise bday in Austria which made it somewhat better. Well lets keep it brief, today I cleaned 4 filters, yes 44444444444 filters on the still broken washing machine and dryer by Siemens, which is supposed to the best (HA!) brand in Germany. Once again, no comment. In America, my beloved country I have a Maytag, and like the commercial says, I never see my Maytag repairman. There is 1, ONE filter to clean on the dryer and it has worked for over 15 years.PERIOD! Now this piece of crap in my GERMAN apartment, I have called the Siemens company, they came out cleaned a filter or two and then charged 132 Euros=$200USD . 5 months later, I am getting the same buzzing beeper, the one that DROVE ME UP THE FREAKING WALL remember? and an error message. I called Siemens around 4 times now and they insist that I clean the filter first and make sure "there is not a coin in the filter." Now, I don't know how big their coins are but r u kidding me/?!?! why would you make a product that allows a size of a COIN to fall through the filter? So there I was disassembling my floorboard, opening the machine, releasing the pump, unscrew the filter (which flooded the floor) ck for COINS and rinse it out and put it back in. I had to do this TWICE! then doing laundry today, my favorite chore esp with doing double the amount of loads cause the machines are the size of a bucket and they don't wash properly anyways. Another error message on my dryer buzzes, unbelievable, so I clean the air filter, the water filter and the bottom filter underneath my dryer. Now, thank GOD I had ordered the manuals in English months and months before because I have to disassemble all the parts of these high quality, German products. Now, I am much better at this tech stuff, home stuff than most girls, but THIS is still ridiculous. My husband doesn't even know where the filter would be, I will show him tonight. But that's always fun, calling German co's asking if they speak English, getting transferred taken a message or disconnected because the PHONE SYSTEM is like post war Germany and you still can get disconnnected or the other person can't hear you. YES YES YES it's not third world, it's POST WAR Germany like from the 1950's where the phone systems have problems, things are done in such a backwards way here, you can't get any variety, fresh spinach is unheard of and neither is fresh seafood, you have to get everything frozen. It's almost like East Germany, just slightly better. And btw, I met an Eastern German who happened to be my Siemens repair guy ;0 and he said he would much rather live in the old East German way, that there is too much to think about now, HAHHAHHAHAH! Socialism lives! and that it was much easier to have the govt do everything for you, he also said he has to work harder now and it's better the old way. He is very nice btw, but this made it so incredulous and that is the mentality of these people, so of course this backwards country will NEVER be as fine tuned as America. Take your social welfare, social health care and frozen spinach. I would rather have freedom, liberty, capitalism, variety, choice, independence and fresh seafood anyday!! PERIOD!

p.s. so let me just tell you the status of my wonderful cel phone service provider BASE, another fine German company with excellent customer service and great service period. So, I am still locked into an iron-clad 2 year contract, prison, jail, commitment whatever you call it. And after buying the NEWEST BEST MOST EXPENSIVE Blackberry phone from the US. I am stuck with a cel that still barely works. I had downloaded Apps, you know just like the Iphone, which I CANNOT GET because I live here, in freaking here, where an Iphone can cost you the price of a small car, and I can't start a new contract w AT&T cause I live freaking here, anyways.. So I think I had written that I signed up for the internet service w BASE and it never never never works properly, I can't even get Google maps to work on it. I have only been on my email a few times and most of the time I get network unavailable, network server down or some other error message. So, I went to my BASE store in Uggsberg, and he is Russian I think, barely speaks english but enough to understand and you would think this would be easy but it's NOT, NOTHING IS EASY IN GERMANY, NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING! NOTHING WILL WORK PROPERLY< NOTHING WILL BE EASY TO CALL OR COMPLAIN OR TO GET IT FIXED< EVERYTHING WILL BREAK< NOT WORK AND YOU WILL BE STUCK WITH IT OR THE PROBLEM FOR THE ENTIRE TIME YOU LIVE HERE! ok, so we ended up going like 3 times, I mean like taking a freaking tram ride to get there and only to hear no, there is nothing wrong with the service, my colleague is on vacation, etc etc. etc. SO, yesterday I went to the Munich BASE store waited 3o minutes while the 2 guys were helping others, you ALWAYS have to wait for everything here. Then came back later in the day and was told by the salesguy who I love btw, because he is AMERICAN! whoohoo, he had moved here when he was young and absolutely hates it here, we had a lot in common. It was great, so finally after months, months actually years of this Cel contract (prison, jail) that I was finally told what the deal is. I had told him that it is impossible to call BASE at .50 cents EUROS A MINUTE = .75 US cents a minute, wait lemme be clear: .75 US CENTS PER MINUTE< PER MINUTE TO CALL THEM. and he said oh no, others have to pay $2.50 Euros per minute to call customer service, this is the most MOST incredulous thing I had heard of, he agreed. Finally, someone who agrees and I am not the crazy one here. I wonder how much a 5 minute conversation would cost at that price, but wait they put you on hold first so it would cost more..no it's their incredibly EVIL way of not having you call customer service. So, he being cool told me that BASE co. sucks and that he wrote down on a note pad that T-mobile was the way to go. LOL. or cry whichever way you look at it.
SO, I had upgraded to an addtl $10 Euros a month for internet that didn't worked, he signed me up for an additional $8 Euros a month for the Blackberry service, which would allow my phone to sometimes work and then be at the mercy that it probably wouldn't work most of the time, because of their patchy service. I asked him under my breath, "how in the world, do I get out of this contract, prison, jail?" and he said you can't unless you get a rental contract if you moved outside of Germany. So I am racking my brain to figure this one out, am still stuck with paying $18 Euros =$27 more a month for shitty internet service. In addition to my monthly $20-30 Euros cel service. FUN FUN FUN and btw, he swore he would try to get the hell out of there, meaning Germany and move back to the states, poor guy, I completely understood.