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I just moved to the USA from the UK (having lived in Germany before) and the quality of the services I'm experiencing here is appalling. To get concrete, we su

I just moved to the USA from the UK (having lived in Germany before) and the quality of the services I'm experiencing here is appalling. To get concrete, we submitted an application for an apartment let. After not hearing back for 4 days we reached out and it looks like somehow they misplaced our application. By then the unit we wanted was gone so they asked us to pay a holding fee to ensure they would keep another unit for us. The online system simply didn't work, so we reached out and they informed us it was fix. But the system just marked the unit as rented rather than reserved, so we had to reach out again... As Dan says defendants of the efficient market hypothesis will say that it isn't possible to provide a better service, or otherwise this letting agency would have been upended by competitors. Only that our experience with other agencies has been similarly poor, and our experience abroad is generally less so. And is not only renting, most of our interactions here have been similarly shoddy. Which makes me think that either we have been incredibly unlucky or there is some common pattern. Here are some ideas for our particular case: * Barrier to entry: Businesses like real estate require large capital and tend to be crowded already, so it is difficult for a disruptor to appear. * Liquidity: While in theory we could *shop around* if we don't like a let agent, in practice there is a very reduced number of units that satisfy our requirements. It's easier to put up with a poor experience that compromise on the property. * Corner cases: As new immigrants we had to go through some processes that most people don't experience. Probably is not worth for companies to optimize for these situations. * Cultural normalization?: This is the most intriguing point for me. Maybe this level of shoddy service has been normalized and accepted in America - or at least the area we live in. Maybe people just don't know better and hence don't ask for more, and therefore companies can carry on providing what would be considered a sub-par service elsewhere.

bombela 5y ago
Same experience coming from France. Everything in the USA is just lower quality. Be it goods or services. And Americans seem ok with it. There is a lot of overhead everywhere. Dentists have an army of assistants. Any product to order requires it's sale agent. Even if you already know what you want. You must deal with the agent. Car dealership have so many sales but good luck getting an appointment for fixing the shit they sold you. Look to by a house, and be ready to deal with insane fees and agents. All this overhead has to be paid somehow I guess.
- gautamdivgi 5y ago
  Where in the USA are you? I haven't bought a new house in a while but most car dealerships (at least mine) gets me an online booking appointment for the same day or next day. Doctors sick appointment - mostly same day. I've never interacted with a sales agent for buying stuff. I agree with you on housing. The agents charge commission and closing costs and closing companies do charge quite a bit.
jldugger 5y ago
> To get concrete, we submitted an application for an apartment let. It's so hard to hire good help these days. And in the case of apartment building management, it sounds like they're renting out just fine despite the bugs and process fuckups. Hell, even you havent walked away for a competitor. > Barrier to entry: Businesses like real estate require large capital and tend to be crowded already, so it is difficult for a disruptor to appear. In a sense, there are startups in the "long term rental" space providing a better frontend to shitty landlords. Even airbnb is moving into that market. Whether they can successfully out UX Prometheus while relying on prometheus as a landlord I cannot say, but its one path out of capital requirements. > Cultural normalization?: This is the most intriguing point for me. Maybe this level of shoddy service has been normalized and accepted in America - or at least the area we live in. Maybe people just don't know better and hence don't ask for more, and therefore companies can carry on providing what would be considered a sub-par service elsewhere. Lots of people own housing instead of rent here. But you'll find plenty of similar angst about mortgage processing.
jerry1979 5y ago
Whereabouts do you live in the United States?
ncmncm 5y ago
Yes, quality is going to hell in the US. It usually helps to book help from people who are from other countries, even places that don't have a good reputation. They left, right? And, managed to come here. However bad it is here, it is anyway hard to get and stay here.
ashtonkem 5y ago
Your letting experience is missing one key factor; you’re not the customer to the letting agency. The building owner is the customer, not you. As long as the apartment gets rented out and maintenance gets done well enough, the owner doesn’t really care if you have a bad experience. And the letting agency doesn’t have to care about you either, since their treatment of you has no effect on their bottom line. The fact that they don’t feel ashamed of mistreating a non-customer is however cultural.
- allendoerfer 5y ago
  This is on point. It is not that the service is not replaced by a service serving the customer better. The customer is already being served perfectly fine.
kidsil 5y ago
Having lived in Germany, I must say the quality of customer service there is the worst I have ever seen. + A fridge I purchased was delivered with a 2 weeks delay, at 10:30PM (!!) on a Saturday (only because I kept calling every other day). + I've ordered a new broadband connection for an apartment I was renting. After several months (!) of waiting and calls, I found out that the former tenant had unpaid bills with the provider and they therefore refused to establish the connection (I was only informed about this after 5-6 weeks of wait during which I was told everything's ok and pending execution). Here's a story about how my laptop was broken and I was calling a repair shop: Me: "Good morning, my laptop doesn't seem to display anything, looks like it's a problem with the screen, how does the pricing work in this situation?" Shop: "Ugh...", the guy is annoyed. Shop: "This is like saying you have a headache, and asking a doctor what needs to be done!", He shouts. Me: "No need to get angry, I was just wondering-" Shop: "Just bring it to the store!" - hangs up. This is a perfectly normal experience dealing with customer service in Germany.
- Tor3 5y ago
  The shop guy was right though, even if he expressed it bluntly. How could anyone come up with a useful answer to that question? It's actually worse than the headache question. And yes there's not much of beating around the bush in Germany, which can be somewhat shocking to those not used to it.
  - lepton 5y ago
    But the question was "how does the pricing work in this situation?" and I would expect a repair shop to know how their pricing works.
  - travisjungroth 5y ago
    We charge N/hr, plus parts. Or, we charge N for an initial diagnosis. My uncle runs a computer repair business and is doing very well because he works late hours, is in a college town, and has flat pricing when possible. This means he spends Sunday night reinstalling OSes on student’s laptops at $75/each.
mattferderer 5y ago
As with many countries, the USA can be very different depending on where you live, even if you move from one part of a state to another part. Moving from state to state can almost feel like moving to an entirely different country.

bombela 5y ago

Same experience coming from France. Everything in the USA is just lower quality. Be it goods or services. And Americans seem ok with it. There is a lot of overhead everywhere. Dentists have an army of assistants. Any product to order requires it's sale agent. Even if you already know what you want. You must deal with the agent. Car dealership have so many sales but good luck getting an appointment for fixing the shit they sold you. Look to by a house, and be ready to deal with insane fees and agents. All this overhead has to be paid somehow I guess.

gautamdivgi 5y ago
Where in the USA are you? I haven't bought a new house in a while but most car dealerships (at least mine) gets me an online booking appointment for the same day or next day. Doctors sick appointment - mostly same day. I've never interacted with a sales agent for buying stuff. I agree with you on housing. The agents charge commission and closing costs and closing companies do charge quite a bit.

jldugger 5y ago

> To get concrete, we submitted an application for an apartment let. It's so hard to hire good help these days. And in the case of apartment building management, it sounds like they're renting out just fine despite the bugs and process fuckups. Hell, even you havent walked away for a competitor. > Barrier to entry: Businesses like real estate require large capital and tend to be crowded already, so it is difficult for a disruptor to appear. In a sense, there are startups in the "long term rental" space providing a better frontend to shitty landlords. Even airbnb is moving into that market. Whether they can successfully out UX Prometheus while relying on prometheus as a landlord I cannot say, but its one path out of capital requirements. > Cultural normalization?: This is the most intriguing point for me. Maybe this level of shoddy service has been normalized and accepted in America - or at least the area we live in. Maybe people just don't know better and hence don't ask for more, and therefore companies can carry on providing what would be considered a sub-par service elsewhere. Lots of people own housing instead of rent here. But you'll find plenty of similar angst about mortgage processing.

jerry1979 5y ago

Whereabouts do you live in the United States?

ncmncm 5y ago

Yes, quality is going to hell in the US. It usually helps to book help from people who are from other countries, even places that don't have a good reputation. They left, right? And, managed to come here. However bad it is here, it is anyway hard to get and stay here.

ashtonkem 5y ago

Your letting experience is missing one key factor; you’re not the customer to the letting agency. The building owner is the customer, not you. As long as the apartment gets rented out and maintenance gets done well enough, the owner doesn’t really care if you have a bad experience. And the letting agency doesn’t have to care about you either, since their treatment of you has no effect on their bottom line. The fact that they don’t feel ashamed of mistreating a non-customer is however cultural.

allendoerfer 5y ago
This is on point. It is not that the service is not replaced by a service serving the customer better. The customer is already being served perfectly fine.

kidsil 5y ago

Having lived in Germany, I must say the quality of customer service there is the worst I have ever seen. + A fridge I purchased was delivered with a 2 weeks delay, at 10:30PM (!!) on a Saturday (only because I kept calling every other day). + I've ordered a new broadband connection for an apartment I was renting. After several months (!) of waiting and calls, I found out that the former tenant had unpaid bills with the provider and they therefore refused to establish the connection (I was only informed about this after 5-6 weeks of wait during which I was told everything's ok and pending execution). Here's a story about how my laptop was broken and I was calling a repair shop: Me: "Good morning, my laptop doesn't seem to display anything, looks like it's a problem with the screen, how does the pricing work in this situation?" Shop: "Ugh...", the guy is annoyed. Shop: "This is like saying you have a headache, and asking a doctor what needs to be done!", He shouts. Me: "No need to get angry, I was just wondering-" Shop: "Just bring it to the store!" - hangs up. This is a perfectly normal experience dealing with customer service in Germany.

Tor3 5y ago
The shop guy was right though, even if he expressed it bluntly. How could anyone come up with a useful answer to that question? It's actually worse than the headache question. And yes there's not much of beating around the bush in Germany, which can be somewhat shocking to those not used to it.
- lepton 5y ago
  But the question was "how does the pricing work in this situation?" and I would expect a repair shop to know how their pricing works.
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  We charge N/hr, plus parts. Or, we charge N for an initial diagnosis. My uncle runs a computer repair business and is doing very well because he works late hours, is in a college town, and has flat pricing when possible. This means he spends Sunday night reinstalling OSes on student’s laptops at $75/each.

mattferderer 5y ago

As with many countries, the USA can be very different depending on where you live, even if you move from one part of a state to another part. Moving from state to state can almost feel like moving to an entirely different country.