Brody wrote: ↑Sun Feb 24, 2019 2:30 pm

clutchcargo wrote: ↑Sun Feb 24, 2019 2:22 pm See it all the time.. Larrys with the americans, Chez Gaston with the french, Genova with the italians, Shanghai with the brits...

...Cadillac/Manhattan with the Clutchcargo's

Nah, I merely adopted another country's hero. And besides, Cadillac has gone from US>Swiss>Swedish owned and soon to be renamed 'Harry's'.

One thing it takes a while to understand about SE Asia is that whilst service is much faster and better than in the West, if you wish to complain about something you don't get a warm reception. I guess they think the complainer is being rude and/or trying to cause a loss of face. Unlike in the West where corporate hospitality training courses teach staff to be be sympathetic and apologise (whether the complaint is genuine or not), here the culture is different and staff will be unresponsive at best and quite often rude. It is normal here for staff to react to a complaint by blaming the customer for the problem. Many people have written about difficulties in getting refunds for faulty goods.

You may find some western owners and managers who react in the Western style but most of them adopt the local ways. Just last week I heard a story of a bunch of guys who were hovering in the doorway of a bar/restaurant having a long discussion about whether to drink there. The (Western) owner was watching them from a seat nearby. After a while he yelled at them to "f**k off out of here if you can't make up your mind".

It's not nice when it happens to you but on balance, I prefer it this way to the insincere apologies in the West. I don't think the owners here are bothered about what people say on these forums or on tripadvisor. In any case, it is well known that reviews on tripadvisor (and maybe these forums) are often driven by competing business interests, so I don't think the system works well in the West.