Me and my husband have moved to a new city and had requested for moving our old Arcor connection(DSL+Telefon) to Mannheim with us. We made this booking a month in advance and got a confirmation letter from them also.

We were given an appointment for 4th December. Now, the Deutsch telecom technicians who actually provide the connectivity for Arcor come only from Monday to Friday and can come anytime between 8:00 to 4:00 pm. (have you heard ANYTHING MORE ABSURD!!)

So my husband took a leave from work and waited the ENTIRE day but the Deutsch telecom technicians did not come to install the connection. When we called Arcor customer service after 16:00 hrs, they had NO ANSWER about why the Deutsch telecom didn't come. They coolly said that they will give us a new appointment for next Monday.

After 2 days, we called customer service again and they said that Deutsch telecom cannot come on the following Monday. So they gave us a new appointment dated 2 weeks later(December 18th). AGAIN, my husband took a leave from work and sat at home the entire day but the Deutsch telecom technician did not appear.

When I call the customer care, they mostly refuse to talk in English.(in fact, the last time I spoke to one guy, I requested to be connected to ANYONE who could speak English. The guy refused flatly and instead, began to give me lectures about how I am in deutschland and so how I MUST speak German and asked me which country I was from. On telling him that i was from india, he went on further to say that how it would be ridiculous for him to expect someone to talk to him in german if he were in India. I had no patience to explain to him how we have both the regional language and English as OPTIONS when we call any big customer care in India so I let go of that.)

I have tried hard with my broken knowledge of German to explain to them(each time a new person)what has happened. Finally, all they said was that they cannot do anything. The technician may be late and so we should wait a little longer. If he still doesn't appear, they will give us a NEW appointment.

When WE miss an APPOINTMENT given by Deutsch telecom, they charge us 59 EUROS for not being available. This is the second time that my husband wasted his entire working day waiting and no-one has come. WOuld they pay for it? Of course not. ALl they offer is a new appointment..with no guarantee or answers to anything!!!! Only more lectures on how we must know more German here.

They don't even allow us to disconnect our contract till March. This seems to be a new game for them , a new way to harass people.

Anybody has any idea where we can lodge a complaint or anything? Talking to customer care is simply hopeless and frustrating. It just makes me furious now! I have dealt with the most pathetic services in Germany but this one beats them all.

If anything...I would recommend EVERYONE against this particular service provider!!! ITS A TRAP!

Hi Meinfrage (Actually it should be "Meinefrage" ;)
I totally understand your frustration and anger but I guess the situation is more of a communication problem on your side rather than being a service problem of Deutsche Telekom.

I vaguely recall that Telekom gives you a time interval in which the technician should appear(e.g afternoon between 14.00-16.00) Why didnt you ask for that ? In that case, your husband should have taken only half day off.

You should have called them immediately, when they didnt appear for 1-2 hours. You should have also requested a telephone number from telekom, where you can ask the status on the day of the appointment. You should have asked them whether they could give a time interval on the day of the appointmet. All of that prefarably in German ofcourse..

Expecting the Service Staff of Telekom to speak English is NOT justifiable. As their customer base consists of mainly Germans. They "can" speak but they dont have to.. the fact that the companies in India offer their Service also in English is more of a history thing rather than being smt which one can be proud of.

Investing some time and effort in learning the German language really pays off, when one plans to stay here "some" couple of years. It is also an intellectual challange which is fun to take and keeps you away from the communication based frustrations in the long run..

Regards,

Lacrima

We need a few corrections ;)

they dont have to.. ->> they don't have to
appointmet ->> appointment
when they didnt appear ->> when they didn't appear
prefarably ->> preferably

@meinfrage

Would you try to speak german to telecom officers at US ? If not, why do you try to speak english to german telecom officers at Germany?

If you really plan to stay in Germany, plan strategically and LEARN to speak/write the language. Otherwise, you will be ripped off left and right on similar cases. Unfortunately, no workaround for this problem.

@pwehrli
You missed one ! ;)
Challange -> Challenge

Damn.. Reading and writing German all the time ruins my English skills.. I should start to use a spellchecker before I submit posts written in English.. ;)

Regards,

Lacrima

To be honest, independently of language problems, I would report the incident to the Consumer Protection Services (Verbraucherschutz: http://www.vzbv.de), and also write to arcor claiming compensation for the lack of service, which you are most probably entitled to, as a consumer you have certain rights, but you need to defend them, otherwise companies will get the message that they can provide crappy service.

As for the language problem, of course, it is very important to learn the host language, but there are many other perspectives to the problem as well... one would be, is it ridiculous to try to speak an official european language in a european country? Another one, is it the policy of Arcor to only provide internet services to german speakers?

I remember the first day in Germany of a swedish colleague, when he went to the Bürgeramt to register he was told off for not speaking German! On his first day! In my opinion, this is simply not acceptable. Needless to say, he quit after three months and left for the uk.

-a

I somehow got dissapointed seeing advices from members here. When you just came from India, what kind of german skill that you should expect?

Yes, i know, people in Telecom much of them cannot speak English. But when the customer asked them to find at least someone who can speak a little bit of English, they at least should help and not teaching how to live in Germany.

Imagine when you are in China, the language is so complicated. At least when you speak English, people will not laugh at you. Or in India, people do not expect that you should be able to speak Hindi, Tamil etc.

I know speaking the local language offers huge advantage. On the other hand, accepting people of other cultures and trying to understand their difficulties is also necessary.

@lacrima

I should start to use a spellchecker before I submit posts written in English....

Use Firefox 2.0, it has built-in spellchecker.

Now I kinda understand why I left Arcor :-)

A couple of things to notice about this kinda problem, speaking by my own experience:
1. the language problem: it is true that you need to be able to speak German to avoid misunderstandings like this one. May be you're not here since long and thus, you should have let your husband speak to them and not take the matter in charge, assuming that he can speak German. Even though my wife speaks perfect German, she always let me deal with these kinda issues, more when the theme to deal with is under my name. Let this be for you one more proof that learning the language of the country you're in is a bit plus.

2. you should have taken the name of the guy you had on phone because what he did toward you is not acceptable and I can say kinda racist, why did he had to ask you for your country of origin and most why did you had to answer to this question? And you would have had to refer to his superiors, you have the right to, that's why they are called "Customer" support. You have to let know that you are the customer and demand respect, never answering questions that have nothing to do with the problem you have.

3. the problem you had is a common problem, I remember that when I moved from Mainz to Berlin, I had to wait something like 1 month to get my line back and the more pitiful, when I moved in the same building from one appartment to another (!) I had to wait nearly 3 months to be able to get my internet line working, all because of the DT people. Lines belong to them and as soon as they know you're not one of their customer, they always act like that (this has been explained to me by a support guy from Arcor) and as I was still on contract with Arcor, I couldn't decide to change or cease the contract, so I patiently waited til the next occasion to resign and I did. But in fact, I can acknowledge that Arcor has tied hands on that kinda situation.

4. If you decide to change ISP check if you're ISP depends on DT like it is the case now, if yes, then be sure that you will go thru the same problem again.

D.

2 useful books for all of us

http://www.handbuch-deutschland.de/index_en.html
http://tinyurl.com/w9u8l

"Lines belong to them and as soon as they know you're not one of their customer, they always act like that (this has been explained to me by a support guy from Arcor)"

That's true. DT and Arcor are rival companies and don't care much for each other. I know this for a fact. Having said that and being an Arcor customer myself, I would say that your case sounds like the exception rather than the norm. Last December we moved from one part of Berlin to another. The connection was transferred on the promised date and the DT technician arrived on the promised date and time. It was absolutely trouble free.

Did the fact that my wife is a German and did all the talking help in any way? I don't know and hope not. Yes, language does play a very important role here. There's no doubt about that. However, it still does not justify the way you were treated. How you deal with it now is really up to you I think.

For the most part, Customer Service in Germany is above par. I hope you don't get a bad taste in your mouth just because of one sore incident.

Regards,

Joshua.

Hmm... I must say that I am amazed to read all your reponses. Thanks a lot.

When I wrote this message yesterday, I had just finished speaking to the Arcor customer care and was fuming, so pardon the mistakes.

Firstly, I must point out to everyone here that I DO speak German. Not very fluently, but I manage a decent show, considering that I have just completed one year of my stay in this country.

Also, for all of you out there telling me the importance of learning the language, I joined a full time German language course within 20 days of my arrival here. I spent 5 days a week, 4 hours a day for 4 months learning German and by April, I had passed all 4 tests for Grundstuffe with the highest note in my class. All this, when I came here initially only for 4-5 months with no intentions of completing even a year here. It's a different story that I stayed on longer.

That is the ONLY reason of my survival for these 12 months now. So I don't think I need any more advise on that. Despite all this and the fact that I initiated my conversation with Arcor in German, I later requested for an English speaking customer-service agent because I felt that this guy was not understanding my problem and was speaking too fast for me to understand what he was saying, totally unsympathetic and rude when he should have been atleast APOLOGETIC. Not to forget that the same afternoon, I spoke to another agent at Arcor in English who TOLD me that all their agents should be able to speak some English!!!

@Lacrima: I have asked Arcor a dozen times to specify some duration of time when we can expect the DT guys instead of making us wait an entire day for a 5 minute job. They say their most favorite phrase: "We have no control or idea on this. It depends Deutsch telecom".(to which we customers of Arcor have no connection)

(thanks for the correction on "meinfrage". I had created this account when I was just beginning to learn German.)

Also, its NOT the telecom people that I have been dealing with(i wish that was the case). I have been talking to Arcor customer service who is supposed to arrange this connection as a part of their service to us.

"You should have called them immediately, when they didnt appear for 1-2 hours. " -> I called them every 2 hours and all they said was that i must wait for the day to end to be sure that the technician has REALLy not come. EVEN yesterday, after the scheduled appointment was over at 16:00 hrs, the cus-care fellow told me to wait another hour(mebbe the technician was late).

When I ask for any contact no. of the telecom ppl., Arcor says they don't have information on that(or cannot pass it to me).

"Expecting the Service Staff of Telekom to speak English is NOT justifiable" -> But expecting a CUSTOMER SERVICE should be?? Especially when I KNOW that they have many people who do speak English.I never expected it from service staff of telecom.

@aalvarez: Thanks. This was actually what I was looking for. Some sort of a consumer service thing where I could report the matter. I mean, I don't care if they can't speak German. But I DO expect them to behave RESPONSIBLY!! Is this some joke? You just make people spend their working days, not stepping out of their houses and after this happens twice due to NO mistake from our side, all they say is"we'll give you yet another appointment".

@Nobody: There was NO confusion created by me. Believe me, despite my broken German, I am sure that I booked the appoinment correctly because we received offical confirmation by post from Arcor on the dates and timings(not once, twice).
Yes, the only thing I missed was taking down the name of the guy who I spoke to last.
Are there ISPs in Germany(who also provide telephone connections) without the backbone of DT?

@deepbluesand: Lucky you! (i don't think language came in my way. It's just the recless treatment).

@ All of you: Here's the latest: Our very helpful new landlords(who cannot speak a word of English and my husband doesn't speak any German :-)) took my husband to the local Deutsch telecom agency yesterday. It was discovered that on the day of our first appointment, Arcor had given the DT people our OLD address to activate the connection(from where they had JUST disconnected us on 1st December) .
They had NO appoinment booked for us by Arcor whatsoever for yesterday.

Now all the people swearing by German customer service may please react to this.(i have several other personal experiences to counter that but lets drop them for now).

Cheers!

See, the problem was not that complicated to solve then, expcet that because of this mistake, you will have to wait some more time. I remember that when quite the same thing happened to me (they activate the 505 and I live at the 506), I called Arcor, took a deep breath and started shouting on the phone (poor woman who had me that night) letting them know how I was losing money because not being able to deal properly with my customers because of all their mistakes. Well, on my next bill, I had a 100 euros Gutschrift :-)

@Lacrima: I have asked Arcor a dozen times to specify some duration of time when we can expect the DT guys instead of making us wait an entire day for a 5 minute job. They say their most favorite phrase: "We have no control or idea on this. It depends Deutsch telecom".(to which we customers of Arcor have no connection) we do have some kinda connection with DT: we use their line which is borrowed by Arcor.

D.

Based on my small experience, Germany is among the worst service provider contries. Why a foreigner must speak always German? let's say a family comes here to work as a scientist for a certain period of time. Must he learn German here to speak? Not really!

Germans listen to English music all the time. But if you ask him "Do you speak in English?" He would say NO, I DO NOT SPEAK IN ENGLISH. He should not be so arrogant for not being able to speak in English.

This is an educated country. Most of the people should be able to speak in English. Because English is without any doubt a very common international language. If they can not speak in English, this is their limitation as a developed country.

Germans must be more open. They should be more internationalized.

The foreigners who wish to live here for a long time should learn the local language. It would ofcourse help to integrate into the main stream!