Where customer service is lacking

THE EDITOR: It’s 9.30 pm. Your Club Coconuts invite says that you get in for $50 before 10.30 so you get there early with the lure and promise of drinks at a relatively ‘reasonable’ price.

The only problem is that there are hundreds of people already lined up ahead of you. An hour later everybody is cussing. You’re still lined-up outside the club. The gates open at 10 pm and the pace is so slow that you wonder if there’s only one cashier. You are crammed in a crowded line like a pack of sardines, moving slowly, sometimes not moving at all like a herd of cattle off to the slaughter-house. At 11.45 you finally get to the cashier after dealing with sweaty bodies and arrogant ‘bouncers.’ You then find out that the price has been raised to $120 and you nervously and humiliatingly wonder what to do. It is very unfortunate that owners of Club Coconuts have this disregard for their customers. It is mind boggling how an owner or a manager can see a crowd of such massive proportions and not take some kind of action to alleviate the situation.

Lining up to gain access to a nightclub is ridiculous in this day and age. It reflects the supremacist and uncaring attitudes towards the customer, but then again customer service is one of the things that we find most lacking in Trinidad and Tobago. What is even more unbelievable is the fact that people condone this type of thing by staying lined up and by suffering, sometimes fainting as they wait in line. Congratulations to the few who decided that they were not going to put up with such ridiculous treatment and decided to leave. I suppose everybody has to make a profit; that’s their way of business, but to be as insensitive to customers as ‘Nuts’ has shown, is disgusting. I for one am not used to lining up and waiting for two hours to get into a party, and I have never done that anywhere else in the world. Trinidadian nightclubs unfortunately have remained backward and third-world in their philosophy. But despite the discontent and discomfort, I’m quite sure that many of the ‘sheep’ that flock to Club Coconuts will continue to do so and endure the same fate because the lure and promise of free beer, rum, scotch and vodka is too much to pass up.

J WILLIAM ANTHONY
Port-of-Spain