Customer Service, An Eurostar Refund and Mom's New iPhone

"Mom, there is no more customer service. Now it's all about what you do when they say no." Middle Son


"Mom, you of all people with an iPhone 4. What a waste." Youngest daughter


The younger generation has a different and adversarial view of customer service as witnessed by the above comment from my middle son.  But they use all these cool tools when companies don't perform and then supposedly things start to happen. So I went out and got an iPhone, right after my customer service problem with Eurostar. Inspired by my new status as part of the digital elite, I used state-of-the-art digital tools to advise Eurostar of my dissatisfaction.

And guess what? Last Friday, we connected. Eurostar customer service read my blog. They sent me an email. They responded to my tweets. I was so excited. They promised to look into why I hadn't been contacted. That is fine but let's not forget, what I want is a refund. Do you now understand why I was upset, why I deserve a refund and how to send the money to my bank account? I sent you those details as you requested and those are the questions to which I would like answers.

So what happens next Eurostar? Is my son right and we are going to have to go many more nasty rounds before this is settled or has social media (enhanced by smart phones) delivered a wonderful new world of customer service in which we understand each other better?

You can answer anytime. I now have an iPhone and despite what my daughter thinks, I'm digitally armed and ready for a great battle or great customer service. Now its up to you.

Eurostar Fail

Cows or Eurostar passengers?

The editor and I took a trip to Paris recently to check on our apartment.

On the way back to London we had an incident with the folks at Eurostar. The background to the incident can be summarized as follows: 1) the editor loses wallet 2) goes to Gare du Nord with receipt for ticket plus passport but no ticket which he must collect from machine with the now lost credit card 3) we explain that credit card has been lost and show proof of purchase + passport. 4) too bad for you, says Eurostar. If you want to go home you must buy a new ticket for EUR245) We have no choice. We buy ticket.

When we get home, we write Eurostar a nice email asking for our EUR245 back. To date, no response.

Which brings me to the point of my story. Why maintain a blog, plus a Facebook and a Twitter account, if you don't use these tools to encourage companies to respond when you are dissatisfied? So I am deploying my social media tools in an attempt to recover what I believe I am due. I've written this post, I've started a Facebook page called Eurostar Fail. I'm tweeting about it. Eurostar are you listening? We'll find out ...

And if you are interested, here is a copy of the email you neglected to answer:

Dear Sir or Madam,

On September 30, 2010, I received very poor customer service from Eurostar.

Earlier in the day, I lost my wallet. This is, of course, not Eurostar's fault but you can imagine that it was a distressing experience. When I arrived at Gare du Nord with a print out of my reservation including my booking number and payment information, and with my passport, I was told that without the credit card that I had used to book the ticket, my ticket could not be issued and that to travel to London on the same train, I would have to purchase a new ticket for EUR 245. I explained that I could not produce the card because it had been lost. Of course I expected a sympathetic response from Eurostar. Eurostar employees said there was nothing they could do except sell me another ticket.  They sent me to the SNCF as that was the issuing agency.  SNCF sent me back to Eurostar stating that Eurostar could issue a replacement boarding pass.

As I could prove that I had purchased a ticket, as I had the booking reference and as I had identification to prove who I was, I found this policy on the part of Eurostar not to issue a replacement boarding pass to be bureaucratic and unresponsive to my already distressing situation. I am a frequent Eurostar traveller and did not expect to be treated this way by your company.

Therefore, I ask that you refund the ticket which I was forced to purchase to get home when it was clear to everyone that I had already purchased a ticket. The booking reference for the ticket I was forced to buy to get home was QHKGHJ.  

I look forward to hearing from you.

If You Promise to Empty your Sandals

Contemplating the world from America's industrial heartland, Penny, last heard from in Morocco, has much to think about amidst the dunes of Gary, Indiana.

I opened the sliding screen and walked out onto the deck – the breeze from the north was fresh, the Chicago skyline across the lake lit softly from the east.  I had surprised the doe nuzzling the beach grass below.  She hurried her two fauns along, as the monarchs searched for the milkweed.  Over the ridge, down by the shore, a pair of heron landed.   The sharp sound of a humming bird quarrel below interrupted the rhythm of the waves, then was superseded by the whistling of a freight train.  Nestled improbably between the old multiplex of U.S. Steel and the new multiplex of Arcelor Mittal, I was watching the sunrise in Gary, Indiana. 

No crowds here.   Coming down from the interstate, County Line Road is deserted – a hot dog stand (“Depot Dog” serving award-winning Vienna dogs from a pretty red caboose), some signs for the National Lakeshore Park, more deer and the occasional circling bird of prey aside.  There are some signs of human habitation at Wells Street beach – it has a pretty good refreshment stand – but the modest, well-tended houses of this beach community, Miller, are oriented to Lake Michigan and the dunes rather than the streets.

You needn’t come by country roads to avoid crowds in Gary.  In fact, if you choose to come to my lakeshore paradise through the erstwhile metropolis, the scenery is positively post-apocalyptic.  Much of the city has been razed.  There are some fortress-inspired government buildings and an unenticing concrete convention center, and of course the steel mills and oil refineries remain, smokestacks steaming and occasionally ablaze with methane.  Coming in on the Tri-state or Route 20, you would have to agree that Gary is a suitable backdrop for Transformers 3, which had in fact just finished shooting when we arrived.

Back in Miller, Lake Michigan and the dunes surrounding it, the ponds, the swamps and the trails through the woods, the uncountable species of butterflies, toads, frogs, grasshoppers, wildflowers, grasses…those are what have continued as the crowds receded.  Crowds don’t come here much, to take a little bit of dune back to Chicago in a sandal, trample the fragile beach grasses and leave plastic and aluminum in the wetlands.  How fortunate that most don’t find the juxtaposition of beauty and industry as poignant and thought-provoking as I do.  I’m thankful that the crowds stomp elsewhere, as nature makes a comeback in my home town. 

The Indiana Dunes Lakeshore Park (www.nps.gov/indu/index.htm), existing in the interstices between residences, train tracks and industrial conglomerates, is the consolation prize given environmentalists after they lost the battle to stop the construction of the Port of Indiana to the west of Gary.  One might have thought that the “brownfield” site to the east, gradually being vacated as industry moved to more pliable labour markets, would have been more suitable than the close-to- pristine lakeshore duneland that was bulldozed to become the Port in the 1970s.  The bulldozers came, but the utter unfashionability of nearby Gary and Miller has allowed some of the displaced flora and fauna to find a new home, cheek by jowl with the remaining homo sapien population. 

We rented a lovingly –restored 1930s house right on the shores of Lake Michigan through VRBO (www.vrbo.com).  The house sits back from the beach among mature cottonwoods.  My favorite feature was the cleverly placed fire pit, well-situated for roasting marshmallows while watching the sun set in a pollution-enhanced technicolor.  The water was perfect in late August – maybe 78 degrees, and changed character every day.  One day for floating on a mattress.  The next for riding waves.  And every day was for strolling down to the dunes at West Beach or down through the pine woodland to Long Lake about a mile or so south, to see who was migrating through – mallards and coots of course, the occasional Canada geese.   Of course, the migration doesn’t get seriously interesting until the autumn. 

I hadn’t been back in many years, and was told that I should be wary of Gary, and of Miller too, but we were very comfortable.   We certainly didn’t feel unsafe. (The neighbors left a good deal of equipment outside and lightly tethered, although they live in Chicago – there couldn’t be too big a crime problem in Miller.)   The peoples’ palaces of the 1930s, the Aquatorium and the Pavilion, have been restored, and indeed the planters surrounding the Pavilion are now brimming – as they certainly weren’t in the 1960s when I grew up here.  There is a reasonably good restaurant on Lake Street, the Miller Bakery Café (although the service could use some improvement), a very nice souvenir shop selling 1920’s posters about the trip to the dunes from Chicago (still less than an hour), and a Walgreens.  For groceries you now need to go a bit further afield –  Hobart or Portage have supermarkets, and there is a great farm market and bakery on Ridge Road, a mile or so east of Ripley Street. 

So do I recommend Miller?  If you promise to empty your sandals before leaving, I do.  If we travel, we need to confront the brutal reality of the mills and refineries that make transportation and much else that we take for granted possible.  And we need to also think about what it will take to keep the Karner blue butterflies, the red-shouldered hawk, and the tree toad healthy and happy as well.  We need to think about how to make sure that the people working in the factories and refineries can flourish alongside the world’s most impressive collection of wildflowers, and afford a holiday or two themselves – and about what happens to their lives if the factories and those jobs go.  Can’t think of a better place to contemplate all of the complexity of the modern world, and of the role of the great industrial powers, past, present and future, than there.


Photo Credit: Penny Pilzer
  

Transforming Family and Friends into Effective Agents of Guilt and Terror

Dear Friends,

Thanks to Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem: A Low-Stress, High Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, I have committed to writing a 50,000 word novel by September 30th. That's 1,667 words a day for the next 30 days.

I will be reporting my daily word quota on social media. Poke merciless fun at me any time I miss my deadline. And thanks.

Kate

Off-The-Grid Travel

Recently, the New York Times ran a story about five neuroscientists who took a  trip to the Glenn Canyon National Recreation area in Utah with the goal of studying how the heavy use of digital services and other technology changes how we think and behave. At the end of the trip, all five scientists were singing the praises of Off-the-Grid Travel.

Great premise, I thought. Off-the-Grid travel just might be the next big thing. It’s exotic, exclusive, difficult to achieve. It won’t be long before Abercrombie & Kent will be offering Off-the-Grid safaris. I should do something about this for No Crowds.

Two days later, I am in Hertfordshire, what Wikipedia calls “a non-metropolitan county in the East region of England”. Hardly the wilds of Utah, but for a committed London girl, a great place to perform her first  experiment with Off-the-Grid Travel.

My ground rules were simple:

1)   Leave electronic devices at home

2)   Drop off daughter at Lacrosse Camp in Hertforshire at 9:00 to be picked up at 4:00

3)   Find something to do for 6 hours

And here’s the thing, without devices or any forward planning, I had an absolutely splendid time for the next 3 days.

On day one, I took a walk and stumbled on Rothamsted Research, a huge agricultural research center that is also the oldest agricultural research station in the world where scientists have been tracking environmental changes over the last 150 years. The center includes a beautiful 17^th century manor house that is used to house the scientists and students.

On day two, I ended up at the home of the playwright George Bernard Shaw in the tiny village of Ayot St Lawrence. Run by the National Trust, Shaw’s Corner  (pictured above) is a great time warp. Much of his books and papers are there, including his Oscar for My Fair Lady. About that he had this to say. “I won’t say I’m insulted because no doubt they meant well, but I don’t work for competitions.” Who knew?

On day three, I pulled out all the stops and followed a sign to Hatfield House. For the last 400 years, the estate has been the home of the Cecils, one of England’s foremost political families. It’s a grand Jacobean place filled with inspiring stories and objects and one of the finest houses I have ever visited.

For three days, just like the neuroscientists in Utah, I wandered around and discovered things. It was fun. I paid attention to what I was doing. Twitter, Facebook and No Crowds did fine without me and I without them.

Off-the-Grid Travel. It really could be the next big thing.

Great Fakes?

We are off to Cadaques in Spain made famous by Salvador Dali. We’re going to the real one.  Not the official recreation that is being built in China for holidaymakers looking for a 'taste’ of Europe and not the unofficial real estate development, Cadaques Caribe, a reconstruction in the Dominican Republic.

“How surreal” I thought when I read about all those fake Cadaqueses in the Guardian newspaper but how fitting.  As one of the most forged artists in the world, aided by the habit of signing and selling off blank sheets of paper, Dali would most likely have enjoyed the whole thing. But it does raise an interesting question about authentic versus fake experiences, and whether we should or can embrace 'the real deal'.

On one end of the spectrum is Las Vegas. According to the website Without Baggage, it’s the fakest place on earth with a fake Rome, Venice, Paris and even a fake Treasure Island – a fake of a fake. OK, Las Vegas is an obvious and in some ways funny if not a bit ridiculous example but what about Colonial Williamsburg. I LOVE Williamsburg and it too is a complete reconstruction, perhaps a worthier reconstruction, but a fake just the same. 

So what makes a travel experience authentic? A trickier question than it first appears. Mark Jones a travel writer and frequent contributor on the BA Highlife website answers it this way:

“My definition is this: authentic places are those which are comfortable in their own skin. An authentic travel experience is when you get under the skin of that place. An authentic tourist is someone who is changed by a place and doesn’t seek to change it. Let’s celebrate them.”

A pretty good definition. You can read the entire article here and check out BA Highlife’s list of the 50 most authentic places on earth here.

The No Crowds definition, which borrows heavily from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart regarding obscenity, is this:

Authentic? I know it when I see it, and the recreation of Cadaques on the coast of main land China is definitely not that.

So what’s your definition?

Will Travel Make You Happier?

The business section of the New York Times ran a major story on consumption and happiness this weekend.  To sum up the findings of a number of prominent psychologists quoted in the article, spending on an experience provides more lasting happiness than spending on stuff.

According to Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor at the University of California, Riverside with a grant from the US National Institute of Mental Health to study the possibility of permanently increasing happiness, spending on travel experiences is a happiness ‘best buy’. She claims that travel provides longer-lasting happiness because unlike a new jacket or a TV, it cannot be consumed in one go. Travel enhances social relations.  It creates memories that can be savored. Most importantly, Lyubomirsky argues, we edit those memories to put a positive spin on the past. “That trip to Rome during which you waited in endless lines, broke your camera and argued with your spouse will typically be airbrushed with rosy recollection.”

I’m not so convinced about the ‘rosy recollection’ part, I remember a lot of terrible trips very vividly, but I am sold on the idea that travel experiences create the best emotional bang for your dollar – or pound, euro or whatever. I’m thinking, in fact, about this year’s summer trip to North Carolina. I’ve been back in London for almost a week, but I am still happier than when I left. Why? Because I am emotionally satisfied. It’s not so much what we did in North Carolina. In fact, we do the same things every year. We eat barbeque, go to the beach, play tennis and visit Chapel Hill. The reason I am emotionally satisfied is the simple but invaluable pleasure of doing those things with the same people every year, a collection of friends and relations with whom I hope to be forever connected. Whatever it cost to get to North Carolina this summer was money well spent and a much better buy than the new chairs I was considering. I think the New York Times is right. Spending on experiences, particularly travel experiences, does make you happier.