This story began about a month ago, when I decided to buy a tabletop (Arbeitstischplatte) from OBI online. The tabletop arrived carefully packed, but already broken. Someone took a defective piece, looked at it, and decided it's good enough to send to a customer. I decided to return it on the same day, but the online return form was broken, so I made a support request.
After several days, I got a reply asking for suitable pickup days. I sent them possible time slots, but no one replied within several days, so I had to contact them by phone. We agreed that next week Hermes will come to my home and pick it up. On the decided day, no one appeared.
I was very surprised and contacted Hermes directly. Their online contact form was also broken, so I managed to find and contact them via Instagram. The answer was "we're sorry, but we don't care". They also refused to arrange another pickup, even though that was their fault, the reason (I quote) "contract is already inactive".
The initial ticket on the OBI side was also closed, so I had to create another one, repeating all the steps and describing the situation. Nobody replied to me within several days, and I took another phone call arranging a new pickup attempt.
This attempt was today, and as you probably already guessed, nobody appeared again...
This leaves me in a bit of a shocking situation; never in my life have I experienced such terrible customer service. Germany is well known for bad service, but that's a simply new level, folks. The new motto of this country is "Nobody cares." I don't know about what economic progress we can speak today if such a simple thing like returning a product to an online shop takes so much time and effort, and eventually fails.