You had better sit down and perhaps get a glass of something strong. You will find this staggering beyond belief. All the more so if you live here.
This is a true Tenerife story which took place today.
Background: we have a specialist door and lock on the front of our house. The previous owners were a bit beyond security conscious, and in fact OH thought they must have been drug dealers. (They were not as far as I know.) The lock (a three or four pronged affair) with handle had been going for a week or so. OH had PM'd it (preventive maintenance), corrected things, taken off excess grease applied over the years, etc.; in short he did everything to fix it and it should have worked for the next 10 years.
Except it didn't and went from almost broken to completely broken. At least we can lock it from the inside and have another way outside the house.
He managed to find the make and model of the lock and the manufacturer who is in Badajoz on the peninsula.
I sent a mail to them in Badajoz at 13.30 asking where we could buy their locks here.
At 14.06 they replied, giving us the name of a company we know up in La Laguna (Junkers distributor, think back to solar water heater).
At 14.30 I sent Siepers a mail asking if we needed to go to La Laguna or if we could buy things online.
At 15.08 I was cc'd on a mail from Siepers to another division saying that my mail had come to them in error and it was for the new division.
At 16.29 I received a mail from Siepers here telling me to go to the Cerrajería in Adeje in Los Olivos by the HiperDino. In other words, 10 minutes down the road.
WTF? Who the hell gets this kind of response in Spain? Well I never is simply not strong enough. What kind of companies respond so quickly, from company to company, division to division, cc'ing the customer, and sending a response through to said customer within three hours? In any country?
It is my fervent wish none of this ever ends up on the rant thread.
Well done to all!