Customer Service

Customer service is a concept that hasn’t quite reached mainstream Honduras yet. As an American who comes from a country where ‘the customer is always right’, this is quite a shock for me. Once when I had the wonderful opportunity of going to a Pizza Hut (an American chain where you would think they would have some kind of training in customer service) they entered our order into the computer wrong and overcharged us. When we pointed it out to our waitress she sent over the manager who explained that they can’t change what has been entered into the computer. I then asked how she could solve the problem and she just looked at me with a blank face. Luckily I am usually hanging around people who are a little more understanding than I am so we decided to let it go. Basically the manager didn’t feel like it was her problem to fix because it was the computers fault and so we, the customer, would just have to overpay because it was the computers fault (not the fault of the waitress who put the order in wrong).
Agua Pura decided to get shirts made with the Agua Pura symbol to spruce up our look a little. So we went to the shirt factory and ordered them and they said that would be ready in one week. Wow, that is fast. Well, of course they weren’t ready in one week, nothing is ever ready when they say it will be ready. About three weeks later we got the shirts and all of them were correct except for one was the wrong color. I asked what type of compensation the company could give us for delivering their product two weeks late and not delivering what we asked for. Well, she did not like that and went into about a 5 minute lecture about how she was really doing us a favor by making these shirts for us and the color is not really the most important part so that shouldn’t matter and how it is not her fault that they were late (passing the blame seems to be a reoccurring theme here). Needless to say, we didn’t get a discount.
Making change is a tricky task when you have big bills. I once tried to pay for my 15 lempira internet bill with a 100 lempira note (~$5) and the attendant said she didn’t have change and just looked at me with a blank face. I said I had 14 and could bring the other 1 later. That didn’t work for her. She then asked another guy if he had change and waited a few minutes and continued to look at me with a blank face. Then a few minutes later she pulled out change from under the desk and gave me my change. She did have change after all!