[GoNative]

I have experienced quite a lot of slow and inefficient customer service whilst living in Japan and being ignored. With some things it was incredibly frustrating. Especially when companies offered english speaking service but their operators had such terrible english it was almost useless. I somewhat agree with acjama that at least in some things customer service is very inefficient and slow and I think it may well be because Japanese people on the whole are too polite to be overly demanding!
I was in a little country town in Hokkaido though and I suspect that had something to do with it. I doubt people living in the big smokes like Tokyo or Osaka would have to deal with similar issues we had. And I was involved in things that most here wouldn't ever experience in Japan themselves, things like property development and management.