The nice lady at Ambiolhão…

Yesterday, I was looking through my email, all one hundred and twenty-eight of them. Yes, I’m not very good at keeping up-to-date with email.

To be honest, email seems rather passé nowadays. I see an iMessage, I check it. I see a WhatsApp message, I check it. I see a Facebook message, I check it. Then a couple of times a week, I check my emails… and even then, I miss some of them because of the amount of crap that now comes through.

Bloody hell… technology is meant to make things easier.

Anyway, I was looking through my email yesterday and saw that my water bill for my house in Olhão had come through. No problem. I opened it up, knowing that the house had been empty for a couple of months and that the bill would simply be for the standing charge.

I opened it up, looked at it. I looked away, rubbed my eyes and looked at it once more: €495.

What the…?! Aaahhhh!!!!

Had I put the wrong figure in last time I’d entered the consumption manually? Had the pipes sprung a leak and the water-meter man somehow managed to read the meter, despite it being internal, situated in the back yard? I really didn’t know.

I went straight on to the Ambiolhão website, checking my past consumption entries. I checked August: last reading 331, actual 334. This was the month that my mate had moved out. I checked September: last reading 334, actual 335. Yes, a bit of cleaning, washing etc. October: last reading 335, actual 335. No activity at all. November: last reading 425… Eh?

Well, that couldn’t be, could it? What was going on?

There was nothing for it. I printed off all the relevant documents, and this morning I headed to Olhão to check out the real water-meter reading and visit the Ambiolhão loja (shop) to find out what was going on.

I caught the train, got off at the other end, headed to the house, unlocked the back door, checked the meter (335!) and headed for the Ambiolhão loja (shop).

The shop has moved. They now have comparatively palatial premises next to the harbour. The old one was close to the Câmara and was always claustrophobically heaving – and, on the whole, you would have a fair wait before you were served.

Had things changed? To be honest, I wasn’t anticipating being home for lunch.

Anyway, I went thought the mirrored front door, wondering what was behind it. What I found was a security guard who asked why I was there. I told him, pulling out papers to prove my case. Half-way through, he got bored, went to the ticket machine, pressed a button and gave me a ticket: B007. I have no idea why he pressed that particular button or what that particular button stood for, but still, I had a ticket.

Just around the corner, I found the waiting room, and inside I found fourteen people already waiting… bloody hell.

I looked at he screen telling me where I was in the queue. I saw B003 was at Balcão 2. Well, that wasn’t too bad. But after I’d been there for twenty minutes, I realised that Balcão 2 was dealing with the difficult customers. Balcão 1 was flying through all the other customers (payments mostly), but Balcão 2… bollocks. Then B004 was called and I saw daylight. And to be honest, B004 was dealt with quite quickly, and I noticed that the girl behind Balcão 2 spoke perfect English. Maybe things were looking up. And they certainly were:

‘B005?’ No response.
‘B005?’ No response.

Obviously, B005 had become bored with waiting.

‘B006?’ No response.
‘B006?’ No response.

B006, too.

‘B007?’

I was off like a rat up a drain pipe!

I sat down at Balcão 2 and proceeded to tell the girl that I didn’t speak great Portuguese, but then tried to explain my problem – in Portuguese.

‘You can speak English,’ she said soothingly. I loved her immediately.

I showed her my paperwork. I showed her the photo that I’d taken thirty minutes earlier. She then simply smiled and dealt with it.

Apparently, on December 2nd, I will be charged €11 instead of nearly €500, and all this was done with just a couple of phone calls. The whole thing took maybe ten minutes.

So, yes, today I experienced maybe the best customer service I have ever experienced here in Portugal: quick, efficient, to the point and it provided the result I was hoping for with minimal fuss.

The lady behind Balcão 2 had a lovely smile, a great attitude and resolved everything for me as if it really wasn’t a problem. I gave her five out of five on the smiley gadget sat on the desk in front of her.

And now, rather surprisingly, I’m sort of hoping that I get more problems with Ambiolhão, so that I can go back and receive such great customer service once more.

Well, I’m really not, but you know what I mean…