In order to reduce the probability of a terrorist attack on one of Canada’s urban transit systems, that country’s government announced in the fourth quarter of last year that it would give a lot of money to the transit commissions in six Canadian cities. The goal was to set up better surveillance equipment and monitoring logistics.

But this may have created customer service- related problems especially in Montreal where city buses fail to keep to schedule and when you are lucky to catch up with a red-light halted bus at a traffic point, you are likely to be ignored by the driver who will not open his door even when it is obvious that the bus is not full.

The driver is not reprimanded because the current transit corporation in Canada has a monopoly on bus services in Montreal. Does this remind you of our PHCN? I wonder why they continue to refer to us “customers" when in fact we are their “slaves." Can you talk of customers when there is no competition? You are given an outrageously “crazy" electricity bill, which is ten times the real cost of what you consumed and if you fail to pay up in time, you are summarily disconnected. Yet you cannot seek legal redress.

Sometime last year I went shopping with a friend at one of my favourite outlets in Bromley and getting to my Catford “home," I realized that some customer must have inadvertently put a size 15 shirt in a 16.5 packet. Naturally, the shirt did not fit and my friend insisted we returned it (I gave it out instead in Nigeria).

But I will never forget my experience at Jessops, situated within The Glades, Bromley. My same friend and I tried printing pictures we had taken with his digital camera but when we were almost done the machine packed up. Though the engineer could not fix the problem we were not only refunded, the printed pictures were ours for keeps and the manager apologized to us! I could not believe it.

A similar incident occurred at Decathlon (a sports and sundry shop) at Surrey Quays when we had to change a heart-rate measuring wrist watch which was peeling my friend’s skin. It was changed with apologies from the manager (yet it was bought more than two weeks earlier).

I topped up my mobile phone in Nigeria, made a call and sent an SMS. The next day I tried sending a text message but I could not. I checked my balance and everything was gone! A colleague gave me a customer service line to call but I never got through though I loved the jazz music in the background. Surprisingly, the network’s image maker, my friend of 16 years, for once, did not reply my SMS. Same thing had happened last December as I arrived in Nigeria from the UK, removed my Vodafone SIM and inserted my local card so as to alert my waiting family at the airport of my presence. There was no credit on my phone- but I loaded it three weeks earlier as I was departing Nigeria!

Smarting from a presentation I recently made at the Imo Concord Hotel in Owerri on the occasion of this year’s World Consumer Rights Day, I approached the fifth or so shop from the NITEL end of the Iponri Market gate (to the right) for an emergency photocopying (my ID card). Though I met two other “customers" there, the volume of the job then in the machine would have required my presence there for another hour.

Considering that I had combed the entire market without any luck until I found this one, I was not about to go away. The under-aged female attendant was so obstinate despite forgetting to readjust her machine to the size of my job. And she said for her to do the right job, I would have to pay for her error! And her “boss," initially nice, failed to reason with me even as I sang that the “customer is king."

There was no name the obviously unhappy and frustrated “boss" did not call me because I said I could use Word of Mouth (WOM) to let my associates know about the treatment I was getting- he only restrained himself from hitting me! I paid for a redone job though badly reproduced. I felt so shocked that I was tempted to use one of my military contacts to teach the fellow a lesson but then I decided to let it go, taking solace in Apostle Paul’s admonition that I should rather be wronged, I should rather be cheated- I felt really cheated and that was the part I found really hard to swallow.

The story is told of how eight foreign tourists, well-loaded with cash, showed signs of leaving the only Maun, Botswana, hotel in protest for not being served. Shockingly, the hotel management watched them leave! Maun is one of the most important tourist centres in Botswana. What are these foreign tourists telling their relatives and associates in their home country right now?

The Iponri photocopying/micro-cybercafé operator, though small-time, is a very bad example of how not to “depose" a consumer. Fortunately for him, his shop neither bears a legible number nor displays a business name. He fails to understand that today we are entering a new age, The Relationship Age, characterized by polite interaction with audiences and consumers. You can therefore only be courteous and respectful- remember the “customer is king" no matter how “stupid" he may be.

In 1980, Americans witnessed a shift in the balance of power away from manufacturers and into the hands of retailers. This shift was possible because overproduction marked its economy and retailers maintained better connections with customers. Today retailers in America have lost control to the consumer and the latter is only going to patronize a known product or service in a world of oversupply. Are you therefore surprised that America is the most prosperous country in the universe?