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fine, and “they seize the occasion to offer their most cordial greetings”. I suspect that if I
wrote to them to say that a zebra-striped elephant was running wild through the corridors
of the Uffizi, I would receive the same reply.
Next step is to call customer service. It costs about a Euro a minute for the privilege of
speaking with a live human, including the time you spend waiting for the next available
operator while listening to commercials. When it's my turn, I start to tell my story. The op-
erator tells me there's no record of my purchase, so we need to start over.
So, credit card details, billing address, shipping address, and then:
“What category of seating did you want?”
“I wanted to get seats B71 and B72 which are in the first row of the second—”
“I didn't ask you what seats you wanted, I asked you which category.”
It takes me a moment, but eventually I realize that she wants to know whether I want
Orchestra, Bleachers, or whatever, so I tell her. She quotes me the cost of two tickets, I
confirm, she tells me how the tickets will be sent out, thanks me and hangs up.
A few minutes later, I realize that I never got to tell her what seats I wanted! I call back,
and, believe it or not, I actually get the same operator. I explain what happened, and she
tells me that it's too late now to do anything about it. The seats have already been assigned
and once they've been assigned, it's no longer possible to change them. Have a nice day,
and enjoy the concert.
(Actually, the concert was so spectacular that it made up for all that preceded it. For those
who don't know Leonard Cohen's music, here's my favorite cut of him singing
Hallelujah
:
After a number of these online experiences, internet shopping in Italy quickly begins to
lose its allure. Beta testing—an essential part of the software development process—is still
waiting to be discovered. You realize that many of the companies that are pretending to be
onthecuttingedgeofinternettechnologyhavehiredprogrammerstopulltogetheracouple
of screens hooked to a shopping cart that works most of time, except when it doesn't. It's
an unstable universe where the only thing youcan be sure ofis that sooner orlater you'll be
on hold on the phone waiting to talk to someone in Customer Service. With small stuff like
tickets or office supplies it's annoying but not devastating. Much worse are those situations
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