evamar

Oh yes, my anecdote happened some 20 years ago, of course things have changed (for good in many cases!). As I said, it's only recently that Spanish people have started filling the Hojas de reclamaciones rather than just complaining to everybody they knew. OK... so now they fill their complain AND also tell everybody they know, at least for what my friends and family tell me.

Maybe the Internet makes it easier for bad feedback to be noticed, so companies are putting more effort into customer service?

Lynn R

We've had our complaining heads on again today (there's a surprise, I hear you say), about the long running saga of the street improvement works around where we live. The work began in early March and is still nowhere near finished, and quite honestly I could make a better job of laying paving stones myself than these guys are doing.

So we wrote out a letter of complaint yesterday and went down to the office of the Iniciativa Urbana which is responsible for the works this morning. After a couple of minutes we were ushered into the office of the head honcho who read our letter and visibly flinched when he looked at the photographs we'd taken along on a memory stick. He got on the phone to the woman responsible for supervising the works, and summoned her to meet him in an hour's time and they would come round to meet us at our house. They duly arrived and within 5 minutes the workmen were clearing away all the rubble they had left opposite my house last week and refused to move when I asked them to before they finished work last Thursday. The big gap left between the bottom of my wall and the new pavement has been filled in this afternoon, as he promised, and they have taken note of the broken and loose paving stones that need to be replaced before the work goes any further.

A couple of our neighbours (Spanish) also gave him an earful whilst he was here, but I don't know why none of them had complained before. Complaining works - just do it, folks!

Retired in Euskadi

We did, about 5 years ago, in Sitges. We complained about the salad they served, which appeared several days old.
The woman got really scared & offered us the menu del dia for free.
Stupidly, we went along with that. Should have stick to our guns!

As dear old Clive Dunn (Dad's Army fame) might have said: "they don't like it 'up 'em".

scampicat

I asked one of our bar owners what would happen if I filled one in. He got out a huge club from under the counter.

He WAS joking (I hope!)