Customer Service

Customer service in Mozambique cannot be taken for granted. Once we drove ½ hour through terrible traffic to pay a bill. When we arrived, they worked at getting the invoice around, hummed and hawed and finally said, “Why don’t you come back tomorrow?” Now this is a common phrase we hear a lot. But we were there to give them money and were not about to spend another hour in awful traffic plus fuel at $6/gallon to come back. So we politely declined and said we could wait until they figured it out and then pay them that day. Well, thankfully we didn’t have to wait too long and paid the bill.

We could tell you lots of other stories, but we try not to remember them or be too negative about things that are counter to our culture.

It’s come to the place where we are actually surprised when we come to the Midwest and are greeted politely and thanked after the transaction. We just don’t expect it anymore.

But today I was pleasantly surprised. Yesterday when I got my glasses out of their case, one lens had popped out. Apparently the case got bumped somewhere. There is an optical place not too far from our house, so I took the glasses there. When I walked in, one person was sitting in a waiting area so I went up to the counter and waited. Another person came in and I showed her what I needed. She told me to go to the other counter and the person waiting got up and helped me. She never said a word to me, but she took the glasses and fixed them in about 3 min. Then she cleaned them and handed them back to me and that was that! I thought maybe they’d ask for some payment but since she never said anything I walked out of the store. So you never know. Just when you start to always expect inefficiency and bad service, someone changes your mind and you realize there is hope.

Here's a funny sign at the capulana store storage room. It says "Prohibited the entrance of strange people to this sector." I'm sure there are people laughing at my Portuguese translations also!