This last week my mobile phone started malfunctioning. I called Telenor who asked me to bring it in to a shop.

I tool it in to the shop on Knez Mihailova. They took a look at the phone and decided it needed repair.

They were about to issue me with a spare when they realised I needed a company stamp to authorise getting a loan phone (I am a business customer).

One of the managers overrode the procedure and accepted my work ID as proof enough.

It is now in getting repaired.

My experience, from calling the call centre and being offered an English option, through to talking to Customer Services and my treatment in the shop were all excellent.

After some recent Customer Service disasters, I just wanted to point out a truly exception company operating here in Serbia that we can all learn from.

On Friday morning our SBB cable TV signal abruptly failed. I called the call centre and an agent told me there was a general problem in my area and it would be fixed later.

On Saturday morning it was still broken, so I called again. This time I was told that it was not that general problem, but something specific to me, so  “someone will call you later”. On Saturday afternoon I called again, and this time I was told “maybe they will call you today, maybe tomorrow”.

On Sunday, no call from SBB,  I called again and got the  “someone will call you later”. Of course no one called.

This afternoon (Monday) I called again and, yes,  “someone will call you later”. I explained that I had been told this every day for three days, so the agent put me on hold and then came back to tell me “That was the weekend, someone will call you later or tomorrow”.

I do not expect that call any time soon….

Some things that SBB could do to improve thremselves.

1. English option. Its is pot luck if you get an English speaking agent or not when you call the Call Centre. English language skills should be mandatory for all call centre staff. The new phone system (that seems to have gone live today) presents the caller with various options (Press 1 for …). All the options are in Serbian. No English option at all. They could learn from Telenor on this.

2. Tell the truth. I would much rather be told that there are too few engineers working at the weekend to be able to get my problem solved before Monday or Tuesday than fobbed off with nonsense about an imminent call. One can go out and buy an aerial, but not when you think the engineer is imminent.

3. If you say you will call back, then make sure you do. It is deeply frustrating to be told you will be called back then hear nothing day after day. I have Bel Medic do this to me today too. Must be the season for it.

Could Ana from Belgium, who was having problems registering on the forum, please contact us via the contact form again?

A glitch stripped out your email address, so we could not write back!

Tim Judah has a good piece in the BBC on the recent discover of another mass grave in Serbia. He credits Serbia for its openness and willingness to face the past.

He also draws attention to the crimes commited against Serbs, including the alleged trafficking of organs cut from Serb victims of Kosovo Albanian militia.

I am delighted to see Serbia facing up to its past and aggressively dealing with war criminals. Serbian wrongdoing stopped over a decade ago, but its is still politically obstructed by refusal to own up and move on. This has allowed the ongoing crimes and human rights abuses against Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo to be ignored.

By owning up to and apologising for what the Milosevic regime did over a decade ago, Serbs can finally draw proper attention to the crimes being committed against them today. Hundreds of thousands of Serb refugees – victims of ethnic cleansing from Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia – are still homeless. Serbs in Kosovo are still suffering gross human rights violations, including intimidation, violence, harassment and discrimination.

By owning up to and prosecuting those responsible for Serbs crimes, Serbs are not only getting justice for their victims, but they are also clearing the way for justice for Serbs. The sooner Serbs crimes become “old news”, the sooner crimes against Serbs will become headline news in the future.

BBC News – Mass grave find shows Serbia slowly facing up to past

The discovery of a mass grave in Serbia, thought to contain the bodies of about 250 Kosovo Albanians, is a brutal reminder of the wars of the 1990s.

But Serbia’s readiness to publicise the find is a sign that some things have begun to change.

…In Kosovo, too, there has been little open discussion about crimes committed on the Albanian side during the conflict. Allegations that hundreds of Serbs and Albanians were murdered in Albania during and after the war by the Kosovo Liberation Army have met with blanket denials.

Among the most gruesome allegations are that some of those prisoners had their organs removed, in order to sell them, before being killed.

Albania has dismissed the claims as fiction, but the UN and non-governmental organisations are still pressing for a full investigation.

…Another hopeful sign is the vigorous debate which is now taking place between non-governmental organisations across the former Yugoslavia over the creation of what is called the RECOM initiative.

This aims to establish the facts about war crimes in order, in part, to establish a basis for reconciliation but also to prevent facts being distorted for political ends in future.