Swiss Stone-age Customer Service at TDK

German: https://www.rezamusic.com/writings/law-ethics/Schweizer-Kundenservice-aus-der-Steinzeit-bei-TDK

By Reza Ganjavi

This story happened in year 2003. Those days, customer service was still a very foreign concept in Switzerland. A few years later the culture was gradually forced to change away from a farmer mentality that vendors are king (vs. American, and other modern cultures where customer is king). Swiss Franc was also very strong those days but lost a lot of its value over the years, as the economy transitioned into a more modern one. 

I encountered several situations like this where the vendor tried to bully me and think they can get away with it, just because I am a foreigner. They regretted it every time, and hopefully learned a lesson. In this case, they sent me the wrong product and then refused to refund it !! I finally got a refund but it took a lot of work. Here are the emails I sent them: 

All messages were sent in English and automatic German translation. 

EMAIL 1 

From: Ganjavi

To:

Cc: cornelia_buettler@tdk-lu.ch ; kurt ; ganjavi@dtc.ch ; claude.fink@emtec-group.ch

Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 13:51

Subject: For Mr. Peter Buehler Please

Dear Mr. Peter Buehler:

I used to be a customer of Sacom. Recently I ordered some TDK tapes through TDK. They passed my order to you. Nothing happened for days and finally when I called to follow up you son, Mr. Claude Buehler said it will be several months before they get TDK's in the office so he offered to send me EMTEC tapes. I am familiar with EMTEC because in the studio we use them, so I accepted the offer. When I got the tapes they were BASF. We had bad experience with BASF and I did not want BASF. To confirm I spoke with the number Mr. Claude Buehler gave me  EMTEC Group's number (Mr. Fink) and they said DAT tapes since about last year and a half were made under the EMTEC brand and therefore BASF is old and whatever is out there is old stock. Mr. Claude Buehler also told me that EMTEC DAT tapes were not available and it will be some months.

I sent the BASF tapes back and Mr. Claude told me he will refund all the money - including shipping - because it is your responsibility that you sent me the wrong tapes -- I already had to pay for postage to send them back anyway.

To make a long story short, now Mr. Claude Buehler tells me to go fight the case in court in order to get my money back, and he is not even willing to listen or talk to me – is this how you treat a customer? I do not want to fight. If you and I fight over such small things how can we expect to have peace in the world? The money is small but the principle is important -- he is trying to impose the shipping fee of the wrong tapes he sent on me, and furthermore, I still have not received the money for the tapes yet, and when I asked when I would get it, Jasmin tell me she is an apprentice and has no idea and can not find out.

I take responsibility of the TDK shipment after TDK told me (after several phone calls across Europe) they do not make professional tapes any longer. By the way, 2 days later I got EMTEC tapes from Dr. Gunter!

So I hereby kindly ask you to refund my money. You may want to teach your son that when he can avoid a fight he should because it will be a waste of time for everyone. Here I am saying, let's come to an agreement, we don't need a judge. He should never underestimate anyone. If you and I can not resolve this, if we do not have enough intelligence to work this out without the involvement of the court, our world is hopeless. I want to resolve this and put it behind us but I can not simply drop it because you owe me money and the principle is too big to just drop.

Here's my account number: 

You should really assume the shipping fee for both sets of tapes, but I have to see how customer oriented you are. With both shipping fees assumed by you (this is what I would do if I were you, specially since it only cost you less than 5 francs to ship the tapes) the 118.35 which I had paid.

So one shipping fees assumed by you (for the wrong EMTEC's) you owe me: 118.35 - 10 = 108.35

Please pay this in the next 10 days so we can close this case.

Thank you and best regards

R.Ganjavi

~~~

EMAIL 2

23 JUNE 2003

Dear Mr. Peter Buehler: 

I sent you an email last week which I think they did not let you see -- maybe they want to hide this from you and their ignorance is so frustrating. I wrote to you the message below telling you that you still owe me some money -- for the shipping of the wrong BASF tapes you sent me. 

I got a message from your company -- I suppose if was from Mr. Claude or someone else who basically ignored my message and they said : "Die Zahlung wurde bereits ausgeführt.".  I am not stupid to write to you once the payment is already made but the payment you made was not accurate. You charged me for the shipping of the wrong tapes you sent me and this is really really bad customer relationship. 

I don't believe you want to fight with me. I want to make sure that if you decide to fight you are fully understanding why, and Mr. Claude or whoever sent me this message this morning does not understand because life is esier for them if they ignore things but ignorance has a high cost sometimes.  

I am attaching my email from yesterday, and a machine translation of the email from the other day which shows that I expect you to pay me 118.35, at worset, 108.35, and not 96.  

So please pay the remainder of the money you owe me in the days ahead and make the intelligent move so we can close this stupid case. 

Best Regards 

Ganjavi 

~~~

EMAIL 3

20 JUN 2003

Dear Mr. Peter Buehler:

Jasmin tells me that you had approved refunding the shipping fee which you owe me. But your finance person says she will not refund it. Can you please clarify this and have someone call me and tell me either yes or no. Yes, we will refund the money we owe you, or No, we will not refund it and you can go fight us (I am sure you will not like me fighting you).

Thank you.

Here is an automatic translation of my original email -- I am sure it has errors but so you can understand what I was trying to say.

Best Regards

Ganjavi

But I got the money back. It was like pulling teeth.