Yesterday, I took one of the last opportunities I had and changed the date of my inbound train ticket from Paris to Amsterdam, scheduled to leave tomorrow. This ticket was part of the original plan in which Anja, Lemonade, and I would go to Paris for three weeks to housesit for our cousin Anto. We’re excited to visit Paris again in May, but since I had already modified the outbound trip, Eurostar would only let me make further adjustments on the phone.

Lucky for me, the queue for Dutch customer service was so long that I was offered a shortcut to the English department. And what a delight it was indeed! James from Eurostar helped me rescheduled two tickets without any trouble whatsoever, in the span of only a few minutes, and at no additional charge. The whole thing made me wonder why I ever log onto the Internet to do anything by myself.

Based on my one conversation with James, I now have a new theory that I’m eager to put to the test:

The easier it is to complete a task in private on a website, the friendlier customer service phone operators will be in completing it for me