12. Getting anything fixed or done takes FOREVER if not impossible
The english word, “Customer Service “ DOES NOT exist in Germany, they will glare at you, laugh at you, or think you are crazy if you try to return anything improperly or that should not be returned, that is FORBIDDEN! I’m sure a BBB does not exist here either, so you are either stuck with the defective product or service or waiting forever for technicians to come. Let’s start with a few of my favorite examples, which make me feel like grinding my teeth as I write this. Ever hear of Tmobile in the States? Now I LOVE them, they were my cellular service and I was always impressed with their excellent customer service, so nice and helpful were the service reps, I even kept their service and transferred to my mom when I left. I didn’t take advantage of the free cel phones or discounts the other carriers offered because I was so pleased with them. Now, history lesson, Tmobile is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom which is the biggest telecommunications company in Germany. When they took it to the good ‘ol United States, they knew they had to invent customer service in that country to compete with the Big Bell (AT &T) and others in a country where service is very important….Germany could care less. Little did I know that first it would take over a month and many trips to the local Tmobile office to figure out the service we needed and that we would be stuck in a service contract for 2 years, EVEN IF WE MOVED!! That means depending on where you live, you are stuck with the speed of the DSL which is available in your area and that’s it, they even said you should check your DSL speed before picking your new apartment location!! Because unless you are leaving the darn country, anywhere else in Germany you must take their service with you, and we’re not talking about a 200 USD contract fee but 2 years of payments. So when we moved to Augsburg, we were given a huge 60 Euro fee for change fees and stuck with slow DSL service too bad for you. We also had no internet service for a 1 ½ months because Deutsche Telekom/Tmobile did not configure the account properly, their fault but who cares about your inconvenience! Now, calling any company in Germany (which most companies you have to pay a minimum of 14 cents a minute to call them in the first place to ask them about the problem) takes at least 10 call attempts, I am not kidding this is not a joke! Every freaking time we call DT, we would get dropped, hung up, and could not get through!! I’ve had some of them just hang up on me, verrrrrry frustrating, especially when you don’t speak the language very well. So it’s “sprechen sie Deutsch?” the very first and only sentence I knew when I got here. Meaning do you speak English and 90 percent of the time it’s NEIN!!! Which means NO!!!

So we had to live for 6 months after that with dropped internet every 10 minutes in our computer, which is my lifeline to civilization! Don’t even get me started with my cellular carrier, Base. They charge 50 cents a minute to call them WOW! And I am completely unable to get internet service on my cel, it took 3 months to deal with them trying to configure my phone, I just gave up. I have nothing on my cel its like a rotary phone, not even SMS or MMS, unable to download any pix, my earpiece doesn’t work, unable to backup my important numbers which scares me to death because EVERYTHING for years is on my phone and its not compatible with the cel service in Germany. And it’s unable to get internet service properly and it’s super expensive! My cel also doesn’t charge properly anymore because of the electric currency. I’ve broken 3 of my currency converters, destroyed my rice cooker on the first day I plugged it in here even with a proper transformer! And almost every electronic gadget has broken since I’ve been here, but that is not necessarily Germany’s fault, just bad luck I guess. But good luck trying to get anything fixed here! Just for fun, here is a list of what broke:
1 Blackberry Cel phones $400, one got fried and the other is my rotary phone with no earpiece, so I have to put it on Speakerphone all the time, very useful in trams, no battery life must charge daily
1 Ipod 20 mb $300, got rained on and stopped working, costs 200 dollars to fix it, forget it!
1 Ipod 60mb $350, sometimes has problems not working properly
1 Powerbook G4 computer $1000 I dropped it so the screen doesn’t stay open
1 Macbook Pro $2500, the one I’m writing on, overheats all the time took it to Mac 5 times still trying to fix it when I visit the States
1 Brand new Sanyo rice cooker $99, exploded
1 Nano 8mb $300, my husband lost it
Lesson learned? Don’t bring electrical items from the States if possible force yourself to purchase electrical items in Germany and pay the exorbitant price in Euros but at least it’ll work and yes I am a gadget whore, but I am only using a rotary phone, remember?