Central Station, Amsterdam

My family and myself have spent a short May holiday in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, our positive impressions of the city have been damaged by an exceptionally poor customer service we have received at the Centraal Station at the end of our visit. When we wished to buy tickets to the Shiphol airport, a ticket officer refused to accept a 100 Euro note. There was no written information at the desk about that and the ticket officer refused to give an explanation ("We don't accept 100 note", �I�ve said NO!� were the only arguments). After a very unpleasant discussion I asked what the price of the tickets would be. Unfortunately, though I repeated my question several times, she refused to tell me (�Your time is over!� was one of the less rude expression I have heard). When I asked who her manager was, she replayed �I have no manager, who is your manager?� With my family waiting and the train departure time coming up, I rushed to the bank office, where I was charged 1 EUR for the exchange. I had to queue again and we missed our train. Finally we bought the tickets which cost less than 10 EUR. Had I been given the price, I could have purchased at the first ticket desk, as I got smaller change on me. We have traveled quite a lot over the last years for pleasure and I travel all over Europe in business. We have never and nowhere experienced such a rude and hostile customer service as at the Centraal Station in Amsterdam. That incident was so unpleasant for us that we will probably never go to this city again. For us Amsterdam is not in Europe! The positive side is that as a management consultant and trainer working for multinational organizations I have an excellent case to present on how poor customer service can get. The incident took place on May 29, 10:55 am, ticket desk 8. Andrzej Popadiuk