Boro Nut

One of the most striking differences between the US and Britain and one I am most envious of is the level of customer service enjoyed in the US, where the customer truly is king. We really do get shit service over here in comparison. I love to see American drive-through diners on TV, where you actually pull up to a window, pay, and then drive off with your order. Over here you queue up at one window, queue at the next, and drive off with someone else's order. Fast food it isn't, but it's not as bad as Spain. We visited a Macdonalds on holiday there, and I think they misinterpret the term 'fast' to mean 'a long period without food'.

This discrepancy can partly be explained by the differing nature of contract law in the two countries. In the US, if you advertise something for sale, you cannot refuse to sell it to anyone who agrees to meet the asking price. It is the buyer who effectively makes the contract binding by accepting the offer.

In Britain you can refuse to sell to anyone, without giving a reason. It is the seller who makes the contract binding by accepting the purchasers offer of money. Nor are you bound by the advertised price. The 'Special Offer' in the ad is really just an 'Invitation to Treat', which is legalese for 'Make Me An Offer'. That's why you can't get bargains because of printing errors or misleading adverts etc. It also allows shops (and especially public houses) to refuse your custom at any time. This all leads to a 'holier than thou' attitude on the part of the vendors, who seem to delight in requiring you (the customer) to convince them that it would be in some way beneficial for them to condescend to sell you something.

As a recent example, stuck for ideas for a birthday present recently, I was passing a pet shop and had the brainwave of buying a pet wasp, thinking it would make a great novelty gift. You wouldn't have to feed it much, it would make a great future anecdote, and you wouldn't get any grief from the RSPCA if you eventually got sick of it and killed it. But I hadn't reckoned for the petshop owner, who refused point-blank to sell to me.

He had obviously taken an instant dislike to me, and I never did quite find out why. I think I was dressed fairly normally, and I don't remember being particularly stroppy at any stage. No more than normal anyway. I even asked him to name his price, but he just fobbed me off. All I got was evasion, denials and ultimately outright lies, simply to avoid having to accept my custom. You wouldn't be able to get away with this in the US I'm sure.

In a situation like that we have no recourse but to take our custom elsewhere, and I told him exactly what I thought of his attitude, and left. I have since informed all my friends, relatives and associates about this pet shop, and they have all agreed never to use it. This is the only effective weapon we have against people like this.

Being British you do get used to sullen shop assistants, but it was the bare-face lies that really stuck in my crop. They weren't even good lies, which is what I probably found most infuriating. He could have said "I'm sorry sir, but all our wasps are quarantined at the moment" or "They're defective and will need to be returned to our supplier" and so sent me home happy. But saying "We don't sell wasps" or "We never have sold wasps, to anyone, and have no intention of doing so in the future" was just insulting my intelligence. There were loads of them in the window.

Boro Nut

Boro Nut

Whoops. Wrong forum.

ohwilleke

I'm responding assuming that the thread will be moved.

Actually, English and U.S. contract law are substantially similar. The law in the U.S. is as you described and in fact, my local Kentucky Fried Chicken recently disavowed a newspaper ad at the front counter.

If I were to guess, I would say that the difference in customer service comes from quite different sources:

(1) English put up with more because they are trained to be more respectful of queues, etc.

(2) English are more used to rude service, since a large portion of their economy is public sector, resulting in government monopoly which always results in lines since there is less incentive to reduce lines and give good service. This in turn influences societal attitudes and ettiquete towards waiting and giving good service in general.

(3) Competition is probably less fierce in England, since the barriers to entry for a new business are greater. You have more zoning hurdles, more license requirements, less real estate available for new development, etc.

(4) People in England are in less of a hurry than Americans and thus care less about service. This may be in part because Americans, on average work a couple hundred more hours per year than the English.

IvanK

A friend of mine had a similar problem with a pet shop owner in Bolton (or was it Notlob?) involving a dead parrot. Norwegian Blue, beautiful plumage . . .

Orpheous99

Did he get redress for his former parrot?

IvanK

As I remember it he was offered a slug. The slug didn't talk, though.

Wizardry

Say no more.