Customer service - lack of

[Aloha Boy]

Except in argentina, 9 out of 10 shops of that nature are money laundering operations for the administration in charge

So even less real competition. Should be a cake walk for someone with a decent success track record if they want to do it.

 

[Aloha Boy]

Oh, Boy!!

Back in the 90´s Menem sold the Jewels of the Crown (the national utilities companies and its matching monopolies) for a song to a bunch of european companies willing to provide enough incentives under the table. The american companies would not play ball, so none stayed long.
The small change was distributed and people fooled themselves into thinging we were actually making progress.
Then everybody turned to providing "services" instead of producing anything.

The european companies recovered the money they invested in no time and trained the natives to run the utilities companies and export the hard currency for a long time. Real investment never hapened. Things improved enough but they might have done so even without foreign direction. Too expensive to call it aid or assistance. It was, in a large scale, like calling the repaiman to fix the fridge and by the end of the visit, not only he got payed but left being the owner of the fridge.

Another clear example is the telecoms. They put boxes (cell phones) on the street a lot more than investing in developping the infrastructure.

Fibertel basic service is a compressed signal way below the image quality you get by watching the free TV signal. WTF?

Service sucks. Things change only to remain the same. It´s a cultural thing.

We strongly practice the chicken coop way of life. We get pooped from above and we take a dump on the ones below us. The monkey tree has nothing on us.

Iz

There it is again - service sucks here. Nothing wrong with providing services to grow your economy. Some of the richest countries are service oriented.

 

[MatameBA]

So even less real competition. Should be a cake walk for someone with a decent success track record if they want to do it.

There are many positive things about Argentina... but doing business is not one of them. It's certainly not a "cake walk." You have all of the problems that any business faces, but with a few twists. Here's just a sample of what the PYMEs take on:

1) High barriers to entry. You can't just log onto your computer and register an LLC. You're required to have an accountant, lawyer, and sometimes even an architect just to START your business.

2) Extremely high taxes that make it very hard to reinvest and grow.

3) You don't "hire" employees in Argentina — you adopt them. It's impossible to fire even the worst employee without paying out a massive severance. (Having a legal employee is also very expensive, which is one of the reasons why nearly 50% of the country works "en negro.")

4) The government is constantly changing the rules, which makes it impossible to plan for the future.

5) Argentines are not some strange breed of people who LIKE bad service... but they tend to not value it as much as people in other countries. Simply having good service is not enough for success.

6) The country is in constant crisis and the average person has little disposable income.

Can you make money in Argentina? Sure. But the deck is heavily stacked against the small businessman. Honestly, it's probably better to be an employee than open a business in Argentina.

 

[PaulBee]

It might come in handy to have some one you can call who can help with errands such as getting sewing machines moved to a shop. I have known some motivated Porteños, including numerous Russians.

 

[middlepath]

Honestly, if I saw my currency decline day after day and worked for less and less every hour, I wouldn't give a crap about your sewing machine either. Everything people try here fails or the government screws up. I would literally stop giving a crap, too.

 

[ventanilla]

Um, shops that do not advertise nor do house calls not doing house calls is not within the realm of customer service. That's you demanding services they don't even offer.

 

[mc kenna]

Honestly, if I saw my currency decline day after day and worked for less and less every hour, I wouldn't give a crap about your sewing machine either. Everything people try here fails or the government screws up. I would literally stop giving a crap, too.

This is a clear example of the reasoning in arshentina, i'm sure for all the developed countries was a cake walk becoming developed.
So to stay on track here, remember, when the going gets tough, give up immediately , when they come rob and possibly murder you, give up immediately, when there's a need for pioneers to go and claim your territories by living in those places but there's no paved roads or piped gas or wifi, give up immediately, and when other people come from far away and see these opportunities and take advantage of them, remember to blame the foreigners (chinos. bolivians. paraguayan. ....) but above all let's not forget to blame the shankees and the IMF.
To all this i say, argies, grow a pair and quit bellyaching about everything, take your destiny by the balls and do the best you can with what you have.

 

[toast]

My Spanish is poor. Nonetheless, I managed to get a welded steel frame support made for a dryer (secaropa), and two sewing projects that were modifications of back packs to store and carry some photo gear. In all three instances, the level of execution was very good, the turnaround for the work was very fast, and the prices were cheap. I could walk to all shops here in Villa Luro. My take: find the right shop for the work intended, give them plans and demonstrate as needed what is required.

 

[Joglide]

I keep wondering when reading these comments about the primary importance of culture and the overwhelming given to attitudes, with the assumption/assertion that Argentinians just don't have the "can do" outlook that would secure success (aka conjones etc). But the structures are really formidable. Not just the institutions of the state which tend to get the second-order explanation here. Basically governments in Argentina (in these accounts) are incompetent impediments to enterprise and success - they impose high taxes, impossible regulations, make it impossible as well as expensive to fire people however bad, keep changing the rules etc. The third order of explanation is that people here (ie consumers) simply don't have high enough expectations or demand/assert their rights as consumers. All of this is compounded by an irreducible inclination to shirk responsibility and find scapegoats in outsiders/foreigners/migrants. There is nowhere I have read that is quite so negative about the Argentines, however, as this forum. In brief, even when they privatise valuable assets they screw it up. To counter this very dark view of the country we could point out not just the fundamental importance of structures and the over-commitment to primary production and public services, but the vulnerability of an economy where domestic demand is limited by the massive inequality in distribution of income as well as wealth. Even can do cultures can get badly stuck in market failures as in USA 1930s hence need for state direction via New Deal, basically to inflate domestic consumption where a collapse of primary prices and business confidence as well as bank and stock market failures could not resolve the situation. On the plus side in Argentina we have the successes and advantages not just to the public of free services and amenities, but the remarkable successes of primary production and agricultural products, and the high standards of service you can find (not general but is there) in many tourist-oriented services from dance schools to good restaurants to tour companies and personal language services. Argentinians can be incredibly enterprising when opportunities arise as in information technology and re 'services' I would claim Argentina has simply the best and most creative artistic, performance and literary culture in the Americas, possibly the world, hence challenge for Oscars from such a stretched country.

 

[on the brink]

Um, shops that do not advertise nor do house calls not doing house calls is not within the realm of customer service. That's you demanding services they don't even offer.

My point was, in hard times, it is better to modify your way of doing business than to go out of business altogether.

But those technicians preferred staying in their shops doing nothing - and earning nothing - to walking six blocks for a house call. And getting paid handsomely for it - house calls are typically 50% higher than in-shop service.