One Pleasant Surprise and One Frustration

A Pleasant Surprise!

I told you about my frustrating experience trying to spend $7000 at Audiofoto to purchase a washer, dryer, accessories, over the range microwave & convection oven, and dishwasher.  Panama business is all show: logos, colors, uniforms, advertising, enough people so that they can ignore customers and play around with each other, sales people who know little about what they are selling, prices that aren’t at all competitive . . . and worst of all, no inventory.  You go into a big store and they have fantastic displays, but nothing they can actually sell you then and there. 

Lumicentro, the big light store: out of the four items I wanted today, all on display, they had one!  The bulls eye halogen lights which everyone uses here, and I needed 30: they had 12 but no bulbs. 

Buying appliances?  You look at pictures in a catalogue.  Now what woman wants to buy a dishwasher based solely on the picture of the front?  My wife has a PhD in dishwasher design . . . whether the racks go up and down and sideways and whether we can bathe all three dogs in the dishwasher should we ever want . . .  to me a dishwasher is a dishwasher, but not to Nikki.  So how do you pick a dishwasher from the picture in a catalogue of the front panel?  Fortunately Nikki is in Seattle with our new grandson, so she was able to do some research at Best Buy and Home Depot and actually see what various dishwashers look like, how the racks are arranged, etc., and talk with a knowledgeable sales staff.  She sent me the model numbers and I went to Audiofoto to attempt to buy. 

My experience with Audiofoto, and others of you may have had wonderful experiences and if you click the “Comment” link below and tell me, I’ll be happy to include them.  Mine sucked!  And I walked out saying, “I will never do business with these folks if I can help it, even if it means washing the dishes myself!”

I figured there must be someone else who sells appliances.  And in my desperation I stopped in the first small, unimpressive appliance store I found.  INFOX, relatively new I guess in David, on Avenida Obaldia before you get to Elmec (another story!), and after Romero’s.   The manager seemed pleased to see me and axious enough to be of service to find a young guy named Alex to assist me.  Alex spoke perfect English. 

Now I know the language here is Spanish, and I’m trying, but . . . if you want gringo business, and it’s gringo building that is the driving reason for a lot of these new stores in David . . . like Audiofoto and Infox . . . it seems a good business decision to be able to provide customer service (Ah, there’s the rub . . . this is Panama where customer service is relatively unknown!) in multiple languages.  (And let’s not forget that since the Canal construction days when thousands of English speaking folks from Barbados were brought to Panama, Panamanians have had a second language quite apart from the US.  And if you want to get some black West Indians fired up in Panama City, get them going on why English should be an official second language since their great-something grandparents built the Canal.)  And I practice what I preach.  When I was at 24 Hour Fitness I argued that we needed Spanish contracts in California and Florida, and Chinese contracts in San Francisco.  If people were our customers, giving us their business, why shouldn’t we give them contracts they could understand? 

Anyway Alex was a breath of fresh air!  We communicated.  He knew something about his product.  He understood the Internet and promised to email me quotations . . . and actually did!  That in itself is remarkable in Panama!  And his prices were very competitive and better than Audiofoto.  I said I would come in at 9AM Saturday morning when the store opened, and I walked in at 8:55AM (They opened the doors early!  They must want to actually do business and sell appliances!)  Alex was there.  No fuss, no muss.

He told me what was in stock (and I’ll let you know about the delivery) and what had to be special ordered from the States and that the special order would take “at least” two months . . . “probably more like four months.”  (I will let you know.)  Alex Sanchez, INFOX David, 775-1794, alex@infoxdigital.com  Very impressive!  And significant savings! 

Frustrating

Yea, the house. Yesterday the contractor had only four guys working!  Flavio & Pilar, our neighbors from Boca Chica were up to take a look at the house.  Sea Gull Cove Lodge is the second small resort that Flavio has built and he just shook his head.  First he was appalled at the size of our house telling me that “five European families” could live in the space and noting that my house was about the size of his resort where “at this stage of construction we had 45 guys working!”  Flavio is Italian: direct and to the point.  He kept shaking his head and saying, “Five months.  At this rate five months.”   Our friend Brad who built a big house in Valle Escondido and had similar problems with the contractor getting it finished keeps telling me, “Three months!”  And I keep yelling, “ONE MONTH!!”  We shall see.

Plus, the well is turning into a nightmare.  Ah, life in “paradise.”