Service!.....

Say the word “Service” in the UK, and you conjure up ideas of your wallet being taken to the cleaners by the local garage who’s just had a deep intake of breath and told you the car needs a complete exhaust system, new brakes, oil change fuel pump etc etc. At no point would you expect it to actually mean that you get good service when purchasing items, or when out shopping.

It means such a great deal more here in Korea. It’s one of the really nice and unexpected things we found when we came over.

We have a little corner shop here on our housing complex, which does the usual corner shop type stuff, bread, milk, pop, biscuits etc, and can be relied upon to be open from 6:30 in the morning until gone midnight, ran solely by a wife and husband team. Sue pops in regularly for her Coke Zero and my pomegranate juice (along with the occasional bottle of Soju!) Most times with a carrier bag full of pop bottles, the shop keeper drops in a chocolate bar free of charge. That’s what I call service!

We also have a little fruit and vegetable store next door to the corner shop, and Mr Shop owner sees Sue coming and will always get the best fresh veg out from the back which has just been delivered. Service here is usually a couple of free freshly washed plums or peaches.

Service here isn’t just isolated to freebies! We were at the point of bursting a blood vessel with the heat and humidity in the apartment on Saturday last week, and decided to go look at air conditioning units. We had planned on a simple unit which was floor standing and could be wheeled into various rooms including the bedroom for comfortable night time sleeping. We asked for help from one of my factory guys, to give some assistance in speaking with the shop keepers. We headed into town, and made our way to the supermarket with an electrical goods floor so we could get an idea of prices for comparison. We then headed off to the local LG store to check prices, then into Samsung for another check. About an hour later, we had decided on a full blown installed system, and worked out the best place with best price. 7:00pm Saturday night we made the deal after some discount haggling, and got some free drinking glasses for our trouble (Service!) I enquired when they would be able to deliver and install the system, and was utterly gob-smacked when they told me it would be next day between 5 and 6pm – on a Sunday! We departed the shop quite amazed at the level of service we had been given. It was even more astounding when our helper decided to call and see if he could get them in any earlier – He did! They were coming round at 10:00am the next morning to deliver and fit the units.

We had a similar experience when we ordered all our new apartment furniture – we ordered on the Sunday, and it arrived on the Monday!

Delivery and installation are always free! No hidden charges anywhere.

The service we can get here puts the UK to shame – the best the likes of Curry’s or Comet can ever do is usually 7-10 days, and “we don’t know what time we’ll be round!” It means taking the whole day off work, just for them to show up at 5:15 pm because yours was the last lot on the van! Blighty – pull yer socks up! You’ve got a lot to learn.

Taxi drivers again...

Previous subjects of this on-going blog have been on the continuing wonderment of the way Korean taxi drivers behave, or rather, don’t on the roads over here. From watching TV while-u-drive, racing through red lights, or break-neck speeds over pot holes and causing bodily harm to parts of passengers anatomies have been note-worthy material. I can now report, that they are saints of the road in comparison to those gentlemen of the road in Shanghai!

Let’s start with the cars themselves:

In Korea, you can usually depend on a typical Hyundai 4 door salon, Samsung SM3 or if lucky, a plush new SM5. Most cars have seen at least ¼ million km’s or so, but are nice and clean inside and out. The owner/drivers take pride in their vehicles; even to the point of pimping them out with blue LED lighting and Chesterfield couch trim. Suspension is very much dependant on how the vehicle has been driven – these wear down very quickly in Korea, due to pot holes and uneven road surfaces (It wont help if a couple of portly Europeans have been in the back either!)

Shanghai has only one taxi type: A grubby old Volkswagen Santana. I don’t know how old this model is, but each one on the road must have clocked up at least 1million km at least! The body work inside and out has seen better days, the interior trim has all but fallen of and replaced with stapled on plastic. I’m sure we ended up in one that had holes in the floor, so we could pretend to be the Flintstones! The driver is surrounded by a Perspex shield to protect him from god only knows what, and it has more gaps and holes than a British MP’s expenses return. Air conditioning is considered extra fare! You want air? Open the window and catch bugs in your teeth!

Driving style in Korea is either on or off! The driver either has genes from a racing thoroughbred, or a snail. In the case of Mr Snail, this is also usually accompanied with a heavy right foot on the brakes, causing severe whiplash as he jolts back and forward with each alternating press on the gas and brake. Mr Schumacer has no idea where the brake is, and has probably had it disconnected to save weight. He barrels around corners with little or no regard for the passengers, or their shopping from Tesco’s in the boot along with the dozen or so, now scrambled eggs. Occasional red lights are noticed but again, with little regards to passenger safety. If the path is clear, they will go.

Shanghai drivers are always full on! Each square millimetre of available road space is considered fair game, and if another car or lorry gets in the way, they lay on the horn and push in. Three marked lanes of traffic CAN hold 6 vehicles abreast – try telling that to the UK road authorities who want to add extra lanes to reduce congestion! Break-down lanes, Slip roads and anything with chevron marking are treated like the fast lane. If a long line of traffic is queued, then hold tight – it’s going to be ride of your life! Be warned! - Shanghainese taxi drivers take no prisoners.

In a nutshell, I shall say no more wrong about the Korean taxi driver, for he is a shining example of how to get from A to B in a most entertaining, but now, not in a scary way!