Finnish Customer Service

Customer service in Finland comes in two forms:  indifferent and diabolical, not so much "caveat emptor but "forsit est emptori", so it makes a change when you get customer service that can only be described as well above the call of duty.

I tried to buy a new jacket from Retikiaitta's web shop only to find a few problems with the availability and that the site would give different answers, either available or not, depending upon when the page was loaded. Anyway, I left a comment stating so in the vain hope that someone might do something.

About 2 hours later I get a call from the manger of the web shop apologising for the problem, followed by an interesting discussion on webpage caching, javascript, server-side caching, database issues etc. Finally he checked their central inventory, phoned Retkiaiita's store in Helsinki and reserved the jacket for me.


Customer service as its best. So a personal recommendation to use Retkiaiitta!!!

Now if only some other shops in Finland actually made the effort to attract and keep their customers - mentioning no names but two major DIY chains one of whom I had to use the Kuluttajavirasto to force them to admit their mistake and correct it and the other whom I found out later acted illegally according to Finnish Law. And then there's a major supermarket chain (there are only two in Finland) where two of their staff at a store in Helsinki acted in a manner which can only be described as racist.

Actually it amazes me often, that given the state of the current economy and just general business practice how anti-customer some businesses are and actually in some cases are openly hostile to taking my money.