A lesson in customer service

People in the Middle East are not familiar with the addage that "the customer is always right." In fact, if they had a mantra, I imagine it would be something like, "the customer is always wrong, and you should tell her she is wrong (repeatedly), until she proves to you that 1) she is right, and 2) she will speak to your manager if you cannot manage to see that she is right; at which point you should deny ever speaking with her and then solve her problem immediately."

While I realize that Bahrain does not get cold by most world standards, when you are used to over 100 degree heat, temperatures in the 40s and 50s feel downright frigid. As the nights began getting colder and colder, affecting my ability to sleep, I decided that something needed to be done. I couldn't get my thermostat to give me warm air, and I determined that it was broken. After 3 phone calls to the front desk, maintenance finally came to look at it (twice) and said they would get back to me, which they never did. After a 4th phone call to the front desk, when I managed to speak with someone who knew that no number of maintenance visits was going to solve my problem, it was revealed that there was no central heat in my hotel. That would have been nice to know after my first phone call. I explained to the woman on the phone that I would need a space heater, as my apartment was too cold to provide for my comfort. She told me that that was impossible, as all of the space heaters were in use. I told her that was fine, but I expected them to purchase more so that I had one by the next night. She told me that the chances of that happening were slim, but that she would double check with maintenance to see if they could find an extra heater. Since she never bothered to call me back, I called the front desk a 5th time, and spoke to a man who told me that there were plenty of heaters, but their policy was that long term guests could not use them, as they were only for short term guests. As you can imagine, that didn't exactly go over well with me. I told him that I would need to speak with his manager, which he told me wasn't possible until after the weekend.

The next day I decided to try my luck with the front desk in person. I informed the woman that I knew about their policy, but that since there were extra heaters, I would appreciate her sending one to my apartment until I had a chance to speak with the management. She refused, but told me that she agreed that the policy was stupid and encouraged me to speak with management.

Later that afternoon, I came back from running errands, and happened to see the manager at the reception desk. After explaining to him the many reasons I found his policy to be completely ridiculous, informing him that my comfort should be his number one priority, and letting him know that I was happy to escalate my issues to a higher level of management, he agreed to send me a heater, but told me he would need 2-3 days. He also told me that they had no such policy regarding long term guests, which was clearly a lie, because the next day at work I had the man who makes lodging arrangements call the hotel management office to make sure that I would have a heater by that evening, and they again told him that it was not their policy, but that they would make an exception for me. The next morning, a heater was delivered to my door, and I have been toasty warm ever since. I realize that this is a very long, tedious, and somewhat boring story, but that is what most customer service experiences are like for me and I didn't want to deprive you of the full experience...