Money for Nothing - Dire Straits
A word to the wise
When we first arrived, we had nothing. Not the “hey, we only brought 6 bags and 2 carry-ons” type of nothing. More “the airline lost our 6 bags that hold everything we own in the world and forced us to check our 2 carry-ons and lost those too” type of nothing. Fortunately our first apartment was furnished, but not in the “here’s sheets and towels and some plates along with the furniture” type of furnished, but in the “here’s a stinky couch, an uncomfortable mattress and a stripped-empty kitchen” type of furnished. We spent the first night in our clothes lying flat on our mattress.
Naturally we bought sheets and clothes and whatnot. Unfortunately, much of it didn’t work. So many sizes of beds here!1 And then 10 days later Scott found our luggage!
That’s when we found out that returns are handled very differently that what we’d been used to. As in, many times, not at all. The first attempt was the non-fitting sheets. They were still in the bag, and yet. The first store allowed the return after 10 minutes of deep confusion.2 It felt like they had never had anyone ask for a return before. The clothing stores were a no go. Absolutely no. Amy could look around for something else that she liked and exchange it then. But no store credit would be offered.3 Oof. Scott had better luck. While Amy had bought at a chain, it seems (in hindsight) to have been a smaller, local chain. Scott’s store was a larger one and they allowed him to have a gift certificate that he could use later - but not too much later as it had an expiration date of 1 month.
Mind you, all of this had to be done in our basically non-existent Portuguese. The joy!
We have since learned that small stores often won’t be amenable to a return of any kind. A chain is likely to give you a gift certificate that you can use later - but you had better check the expiration date. International stores in general allow for an actual return.
Frankly, after all of this, we switched to Amazon. That’s Amazon Spain (amazon.es). Portugal apparently isn’t big enough to rate its own Amazon. We got ourselves a Prime account and started ordering like mad fiends.
The experience was surprising. Fewer items are available for Prime than in the US, and Prime isn’t the Prime we’re used to. It could be one-day shipping. Maybe two. Or four. How about a week?
Part way through the ordering frenzy, we discovered Amazon Germany. They have more stuff! But since our Prime is with Spain, we have to pay for shipping. Scott just bought some board games from Amazon Italy. Interestingly, each of the Amazons is slightly different from each other. Emails look different. Emails get sent for different reasons. The one thing we know is we are not doing Amazon UK again, despite their better offerings, since we’d have to pay gasp CUSTOMS. Nope. Not doing customs, ever again. EU only countries.
The real difference between the US and European Amazons, though, comes about when you go to return something. Sure, they let you, no problem. But it’s going to be a good month or two before you get reimbursed.
Josie is a wonderful dog. We can all agree on that. And we can all agree that she will eat anything. Having raised puppies on the street, her idea of nutrition and ours differs a bit. In St. Louis this played out mainly during acorn season. Acorns have a ton of nutrition. They also have tannins, which need to be leached before they can be eaten safely. Josie doesn’t really have the patience to leach the tannins. She’s more interested eye-snout coordination. We’re certain she’s created some world records. What happens when the acorns first fall - and before we start the Avoid Oak Trees Walks - is a vomit or two.
Why do dogs vomit at 2 am? On carpeting?
While Lisbon doesn’t have acorns, it has a veritable feast of completely unidentifiable (to us) gunk on the sidewalks and in the gutters. The result is a dramatic increase in our waking up at 2 am to take care of the carpet. And said carpet looking kinda sad.
Family motto: No good comes of a dog in the gutter.
So when it came time to move, we thought, hey, let’s get that carpet cleaned. That way it will look fresh in the new place. And it will be one less thing we have to tote from apartment to apartment. We even found this company, CleanCare, who cleans rugs without a lot of smelly chemicals (yay!) and - get this - they come to your house, pick up the carpet, and RETURN IT TO YOU. For our roughly 8’ x 10’ carpet, the cost was 41€. Yes, you read that right.
We were so excited that we recommended them to a friend before they even finished the first carpet. That’s right, we said first carpet. When they came to drop off the first carpet, we handed them another carpet we realized needed cleaning as well. A funny thing happened though. Amy had paid online when they sent her the invoice when scheduling drop off. But when the drop off guy came, he didn’t have a record of it. This was the day after the move, so we were at sixes and sevens, and couldn’t quickly find our receipt. His van is blocking traffic, so rather than hold him up, he said just pay me now, and call the office. They’ll reimburse you. Cool.
Amy did that and … a month and a half later they agreed they should refund that extra payment. Two more months later, we finally stopped pestering the company and turned to the Livro de Reclamações - the Complaints Book.
Neat thing about Portugal. Every single company has to register with the Livro de Reclamações. The company has to keep the book on hand and must hand it over if you ask for it. Often, asking for it will nudge the company to resolve your complaint. Plus, the government keeps an online book and you can make your complaint there. We have used the complaint book a few times - twice with MEO (once when we first arrived and they wouldn’t fix the service they incorrectly installed and again during the latest saga when we moved), once at our bank, and this time. With MEO it definitely made a difference. The bank did investigate it and decided nothing was wrong. In the case of CleanCare ….
We thought nothing had happened. Until the magic email dropped in the inbox from the Livro de Reclamações letting us know the money was coming back to us! A total of six months and many emails and calls, and it was the Complaints Book that did the trick.
We had similar troubles getting our money back from Leroy Merlin, the Home Depot of Portugal. We ordered a ceiling fan online, they said it wasn’t available, and then the credit didn’t appear in our bank account. Many emails later, and a mere 2 months later the issue was resolved. PHEW! This was the one that mattered- the fan cost nearly 200€, not the 40€ for the carpet!
Sometimes we feel like we shouldn’t buy anything here. But that’s not an option. We’ve learned to do the equivalent of measuring twice before buying and walking out of the store!
That’s all for now.
Love from Lisbon,
Amy & Scott
Tip: Make sure you measure your bed in both directions carefully before looking for bedding.
And the facial expressions of disproval were hard to bear.
A donation box received some really nice clothes!
I hope it has gotten easier since you have arrived. Love you guys. ❤
Returns in the US have gotten to easy over the years. I remember needing a gift receipt to exchange birthday clothes that didn't quite fit for the right size when I was a kid. Now stores can look up transactions by your credit card and put the money back on it instantly. Is that a good thing??? Costco has an amazing return policy and I've brought back a defective appliance years later for store credit. In Cyprus I ran into the same problem as you have, that stores didn't do returns, only exchanges, sometimes. Oddly, knowing a local who knew the manager at a store facilitated an exchange for me once when they wouldn't otherwise do it. I found its all about who you know!