Flashback

For such a progressive city, there are a lot of things here that make you feel like you're living in a different time.  For example - they allow smoking everywhere (in restaurants, elevators, taxi cabs, malls, etc.)  But I did read lately in a local business journal that the King is going to ban smoking in public places - even hospitals!  

We experienced another example the other day.  We were taking a phone we had purchased back to a store at one of the malls here.  We wanted to exchange it for a different phone.  We found the customer service desk and told them we wanted to return the phone.  They sent us to another desk to tell that person we wanted to return the phone.  They then proceeded to go through form after form signing things here, stamping things there, and by the time they were finished, we had about 5 pages of receipts and pages to take back the customer service desk.   Then we were told we had two options; 1.  return the phone and wait two to three weeks for our credit card to be credited back the money we had paid or, 2.  use store credit - but we had to use it that day and it had to be for the exact amount that we paid for the phone.  

I have since tried to return/exchange other items from other stores and let me just tell you, it is not easy.  One friend here bought a blender and once she got home and opened the box, she realized that the extra 'chopper' piece that is shown on the box to come with the blender wasn't in the box.  So, she tried to return the blender and after 30 minutes of 6 different employees trying to figure out what to do, they told her that the picture on the box was wrong.  The chopper was not included.  Funny, since it was actually written on the box that the piece was included.   Suffice it to say, my friend went home sans chopper.