Germany vs. USA: Phones

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Alex (from Germany) and Jim (from the USA) have a nice vodcast called “Germany vs. USA” where they talk about cultural differences and similarities between the two countries. Here they compare etiquette on the phone.

I’m having trouble with phones, skype and co. Can’t find my cellphone, which has stopped bleeping for a recharge, which it needs almost every day now. I guess it’s back to bush drums.

Other trouble: I messed up bigtime. Deutsche Telekom called me up and a very friendly and helpful (!) lady got me to cancel something called a “Portierung”. She said if I didn’t do it, my homephone numbers would be gone. What she didn’t explain was that they had been applied for by us (!) through 1&1, a competing carrier that my husband was signing a contract with. I didn’t know what was going on exactly. She made it sound like this was just a precaution (!), and I could simply check things out later. So she recorded my cancellation of “Portierung”, and now there’s no way to fix it, noone at Deutsche Telekom feels responsible, they are unwilling to cancel my cancellation of our cancellation (are you still with me?). Helmut is mad, and I can’t blame him.

WTF? What’s worse: Servicewüste Deutschland or Rechtsvedreherparadies USA?

What did Aimee Mann call them again? “&§$!@ Smilers”!

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