Customer care in Madagascar

Hello Priscilla,
>I live in a small town in NE Madagascar,and they actually seem to do a decent job of customer service.  The problem is the lack of products. If you are in the capital, there is quite an array from which to choose (though they say the only thing from China that has lasted longer than a week is the Great Wall!).
In general, people here are very nice. They'll tell you directly whether they have the product you're looking for (too frequently, unfortunately).

In the capital or Tamatave, where supermarkets from France are established, you may find most anything, though certain items are just not available.

I want to say there is zero customer care.  But if you fight for some rights you may encounter, maybe just maybe some 2% customers care and not freely given and you get a reputation for complaining. Complaining in Malagasy Society is not good because the people here are thin skinned and fear losing face.
Customer Care- I don't have hundreds of stories of lack of customer care, but I do have thousands of stories of lack of customer care over my 15 years here in Madagascar.
Customer Care that many can relate to including tourists would be  Air Madagascar.   Restaurants- slow to deliver and forgetting the order or even getting the order wrong and demanding i pay for a wrong order, and when complaints arise the staff hiding in the kitchen for more than 30 mins till we all left.
Or the street merchant who says we will fix your shoes and after two months of not being done then the shoes are lost then how do you fix this problem. Or the car repair place that has grease fingerprints all over the car and the car can not be ready or fixed right but just enough, and the price the same or more. Or the hardware store where the products are fixed to the wall, the store helpers don't have a clue to how to use this hard ware and rather than say they don't know, just make up stories of what they think the product is used for.  Ask three different employees and get three different answers.
The fun comes in when you learn the different dialects of Malagasy and then you learn the discrimination of the different tribes towards each other,  and the  out and out no customer service by not being able to speak a certain dialect, usually Merina.
This is a subject all in itself and where customer care turns to minus zero and ugly.
 


Do you feel welcome when you enter a store? Do you get useful tips and advice?
I am over welcomed, because I am a Vasaha with money to spend.  Mostly I hear lies of how good everything is just by  looking at a product.   The Indian owners fall over themselves  to try to sell me something. 

The tips and advice are polished and buffed up bull dung...

Are after-sales services available in Madagascar?    No, never ever ever and its my problem after the product goes out the door.
Which is why you need to test everything before you buy it from a bulb to a refrigerator.before you leave the store

OK  Having said all that I want to make it very very clear that this is not a Negative.
This is about buyer beware and before I buy anything I have done my homework as to what I am buying so I am not taken in most of the time.

If Madagascar had all the rules and regulations in place for consumer protection then this would not be Madagascar third world country but maybe second world on the way to first world over developed country.

It is a positive for me because I do my homework, and get what I want  and in turn I live in a society with unrecognizable rules and regulations known to vasaha ( and tourists) but I live the one life I have in a place with the most freedom that I enjoy.

Remember your homework should include looking for stamp dates of expiration being crossed out and stamped again especially medicine---- You new-be expats have much to learn and you have to  figure on living here for at least 7 or 8 years before those rose colored glasses come off as to your new home in paradise. And , very important to learn the language.

This is the short answer to the long question and would enjoy hearing other Ex pats experiences.

I would agree with many of the points that Tropic Alex makes and that I forgot.  Top among them is Air Madagascar, which has many nicknames because of their poor service. Unfortunately, there is only one other airline but it does not serve many areas of the country.