Accountability sinks

I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought.

It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers.

Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat

I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but computers can only interact in the way the UI was designed, and no programmer accounted or cared for my scenario

The ground attendant couldn't have done anything of course because it wasn't part of the scope of her job, and this was the part of germany where nice was not one of their stereotypes.

Eventually I got a survey a week later about a different leg of the flight, so could I really complain there? that one was fine? I had a paranoid wonder if that was intentional

I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to track it down.

> The person who answered couldn’t speak English.

It sounds like this was the main point of failure. I’m not sure it can be considered an error in the system. I’d consider the risk inherent in traveling in a country without knowing its language.

Germany is the only country in which I’ve had 112 (emergency services) hang up on me because they couldn’t speak English.

It’s worse than France in this regard.

Yes sir. A friend of mine, the girlfriend passed out, being pregnant. In the moment of total stress, we called 112, and said “passed away“ instead of „passed out“. The guy on the other side “well, if she is dead, why are you calling?!” Very rude. He went on to explain, it was an error, an instead of just dispatch an ambulance, had to hear a 10 minute lesson in english (from a german) after which the ambulance was dispatched. When the ambulance finally arrived, she was “ok” so they had to pay couple of thousand Euros for a “negligent dispatch”…

The level of arrogance and lack of empathy and service is beyond limits.

> When the ambulance finally arrived, she was “ok” so they had to pay couple of thousand Euros for a “negligent dispatch”

That part seems really hard to believe for me. The only time you should get charged at all is for prank calling. In fact, if you call and tell them and decide you don't need EMS after all they will in fact come anyways because they need to check on every call. And you will not get charged for that.