Yesterday I bough a book at Akademibokhandeln and when I got home and opened it for the first time, I noticed the front cover was torn almost half of the width, but in a way that when the book was closed you couldn’t notice. This was not surprising, since the first book of the saga I bough in a portuguese FNAC was also in a bad condition. Oh and the paperback formats suck for this bulky books.
Today I went to the same shop, I got to the information desk and showed them the book, and they just said to pick the same one (actually they offered to get me another, but I said I knew they had another and where it was). I got back to the desk with a new one, and he said it was okay, I could just go. They didn’t ask for the receipt nor checked the date (and I had removed the priced tag!). They simply believed the client and I left very happy with how the problem was solved.
And this wasn’t the first time something like this happened. When Diogo bought his cellphone here, he came home, opened the box and everything was there (charger, battery, headphones) but the cellphone itself. It was probably the one they used to show in the store. Next day he went to the shop, he showed them the box, told what happened, and they replaced the box with a new one, and opened there to check if the new one had everything.
It was their mistake, but they solved it without any problem. This two stories may sound something completely common for Swedish people, but in Portugal it would be very difficult to solve these problems in large stores.
The clerks would just wonder if it wasn’t me who torn the book cover after I bought it there, or whether Diogo was just looking for a second cellphone, or if some tens of people would come up the next day stating the same. And they couldn’t do anything by themselves, they would have to call their boss, who wouldn’t be there at that time, and a lot of other inconveniences that would make you just buy another, possibly in another shop.
And I know about that, due to bad experiences with customer services in Portugal. It’s their fault, but maybe because Portuguese people are such chico-espertos1 that they take advantage of all of these situations even if it’s not true.
1 Chico-esperto is a portuguese expression for someone who tries to take advantage of the system by using some nasty trick or bending the rules. It’s part of our stereotype and culture.