Imagine the scene. You have just arrived in London and you need to find a telephone number. All the shops are shut because it is late at night. Public telephone boxes no longer have telephone directories so the next best thing is to phone directory enquires. In the old days it was as simple as that. Now I think Britain leads the world in having the least helpful public telephone service.

First you need some coins. Why not use a phone card? Good question. We used to have cards like the Polish ones with a chip in them. You could use them for all telephone calls the same as using coins. Now they have been replaced with new cards with an account number on them. You scratch off the secret number and then dial it. Then you can dial your number. First problem: where do you get the card from?

Fortunately there are some places that sell these 24 hours a day (at airports and international coach stations for example). Here's the next problem: Some numbers don't work with these new cards. Guess what? This includes almost all information services, including directory enquiries. So you need to find some coins. This is harder. You need to find a shop that's open and where the shopkeeper will either change a bank note for you or let you buy something very cheap with it (so that you can get enough change). Lastly, you need to find a phone which (a) accepts coins and (b) works. You might have to lose several coins in broken phones to find out.

Back in Poland you sometimes find bad customer policy as well. What do you do when you buy something and it doesn't work? Take it back, of course. Shop 1 and shop 2 gave me a refund, so no complaints there. The problem with my faulty DVD though was that it did not play and when I bought a replacement from another shop, that one didn't either. The problem was with every copy of that particular disc in Poland. What did shop 1 do? They put the broken disc back on the shelves so another customer could buy it and be disappointed. I think the idea was that eventually they would sell it to somebody who would not take it back. Shop 2 removed all their copies of the disc by the next day. I buy most of my DVDs from shop 2 now.

I must say that most of my experiences as a customer are positive (in Poland and the UK). There is a myth that taxi drivers overcharge foreigners all the time. Well, after about one month in Poland, when I lived in Gliwice, I took a taxi home. I still had problems pronouncing (and remembering) my street name so I read it off a piece of paper. The driver took me on a longer route than I had expected and at the end I asked why I wasn't at my flat. I showed him the paper and he realised it was not the same street (although it was quite near). He not only drove me back to my flat but insisted that I did not pay the extra for the longer journey.

Glossary

helpful pomocny

replace zastąpić

scratch podrapać

include obejmować

disappointed rozczarowany

realise uświadomić

Questions

Which of these can you use to pay for a call from a British public telephone?

a newspaper

a credit card

notes