Friday, December 23, 2016

On sending postcards from Chile



Last year I’ve written about my experiences of sending postcards from Argentina. Argentina fared badly as the clerk at the post office at Terminal A of Ezeiza Airport had sent me from Terminal A to Terminal C to get stamps, but in the meantime he had already and prematurely closed the office.So I’ve sent the postcards from Chile (Viña del Mar) without problems.

You may already have come to the idea that this year something didn’t work as well as last year in Chile. And so it was.

Again I needed stamps for postcards, this time in San Pedro de Atacama. I went to the post office and the guy in front of me just parted. Now it was my turn - or should have been. The clerk greeted me, then took his ringing smartphone and received the call. When ready he called one of his co-workers and told me: “La chica es loca.” I nodded and wanted to tell him, what I really was going to want from him – stamps. But he received another call, made two calls himself, again la chica loca. Already people were queuing up behind me. I still wasn’t annoyed. And then he declared all countries are the same as Alemania, because he didn’t want to type Japan or China on some of the stamps he then printed out. How much did I have to pay? A little too much, just about 0.40 € or two quarters too much. I would have given a tip under two conditions. 1. I decide when to give a tip and how much (it would have been more!). 2. A tip is for good service. This service was lousy.




Back home again, people told me that they hadn’t received their postcards. But the super quick air mail postcards reached Germany and the rest of the world after two months.

What did I learn from this experience? Better send postcards from Viña del Mar, Valparaiso, or Santiago de Chile, not from San Pedro de Atacama.

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