It pays to complain !

Arsonist said:
I'm currently in the process of complaining to BA, but I don't think it will go as smoothly as the posts above.

Flight cancelled at T5 at 1am in the morning. 26 hours delayed. Zero hotels, food, drink, phone calls, amenities offered to us. In fact they ransomed us our bags, only letting us have them back if we agreed to leave the departure gate (so they wouldn't have to deal with us). We slept on the floor of the airport. There was a **** nugget in the nearby water fountain. There were mice running about. I got an electric shock from a wall socket.

Pretty rubbish journey really!
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I wouldn't hold your breath. Went to Australia via Hong Kong and returned via Bangkok. Flew with BA for most of the flights except one leg with Qantas (which was a completely different class to BA for service, far far nicer!). Got delayed on our link flight from Manchester to Heathrow as BA cancelled the flight, meant we missed our flight to HK so had an 8hr delay in T5 and landed in HK in the middle of the evening so too late to do much other than get to the hotel.

On the return leg flying home from Bangkok the aircraft supposed to fly us home got diverted to another route as that plane had been cancelled, so ended up with a 27hr delay, they only told us this after we got to the airport even though I had rung the CS department and they told me the flight was still on. They shipped us back to the back end of scumville outside of Bangkok, told not to leave the hotel as it wasn't a tourist area, they offered to pay for snacks and soft drinks. At this point i'd had it, so kicked up a right fuss, had a full on blazing row with the customer service staff from BA at the hotel and also on the phone to CS in the UK. Eventually they offered to also pay for all the main meals and any bar tabs that we ran up (my reasoning was that the flight was fully inclusive of drinks and all food, so why shouldn't the hotel!).

Eventually got back home to find they had cancelled all internal UK flights due to snow, so they offered us a coach connection back to Manchester, which was leaving 5hrs later and wouldn't get us home until very late in the evening. I queried why our connecting flight had been cancelled and the customer service rep said it was because Manchester Airport was shut so they couldn't land there. I called BS on the chap but he was having none of it, rang my mum who lives 5/6 miles from the end of Manchester runway and she confirmed the flights were going out as usual. He eventually owned up to the fact the flight director had seen the weather forecast on the telly the night before and stood down all the crews to save money. Ended up getting a hire car back to Leeds which the chap from BA said they would pay for.

Put in a written complaint about it all and got £16 each back!.... They wouldn't cover the hire car as they said the chap didn't have the authority to agree it and they cited force majeure for the rest of it......

Never flown with them since!
 
kefkef said:
Had a weekend away with the wifey at a hotel in one of their suites. Got there and the suite opposite us was being refitted out. They worked until 9pm Friday night, so I complained and got told they wouldn't be working the rest of the weekend and was offered a free bottle of champagne. Come 8am the following morning the workmen are back making a racket, were there all day until late again, then back again sunday morning.

Complained a couple of times and got a few more free drinks. When it came to check out time I asked to see the manager and explained I wasn't happy with the whole experience. He asked what he could do to make it right. Ended up getting a refund of the cost of the suite (£500) and all bills cancelled (room service, evening meals etc) which had come to around £400.

Got a call a couple of days later from the regional manager of the hotel chain and got an all expenses paid stay in a suite at another of their hotels!

Won a brolly on twitter from Warsteiner, it took ages to come so I had a moan and got a free crate of beer too.

Had 2 replacement irons from Tefal due to leaks when both were outside the warranty period.

Full set of golf waterproofs paid for by Sunice as the original set I bought was faulty, so got a refund of £500 and a complimentary set!
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haha that hotel went crazy for you!
 
I'll complain if i'm truly dissatisfied with my experience/service.

Incidently whilst the OP was on the topic of cinemas. Myself and the Mrs visited a newly opened cinema where I live to watch Inferno on Saturday.

All hunky dorey, get in before trailers start, nice seats, munching popcorn and settle in as the lights go down and the ads begin. About 10 mins in the screen just goes blank and the sound keeps playing. Cue another couple of mins and 3 separate people leave the screen (to complain I assume) one of their minions comes back in and says they are trying desperately to get the projector working again. Fair enough I thought, give them 5 more mins.

5 mins passes and what must have been the GM came into the screen and apologised saying they couldn't get the projector fixed and rather than letting us sit in the dark for what could be 30 mins to an hour whilst its fixed they were going to refund everyones tickets, gave us extra complimentary tickets for another time and also let us go and see another film for free that day if we wanted to.

Not too bad really but if I was thinking on my feet I should have pushed to have my pint, Tango Ice Blast and large popcorn refunded too :D ;) :p
 
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Before we lived where we do now, we were on the other side of the city and were using a different exchange. We were paying for Virgin 100mb and getting about 2mb in the evenings. I phoned up every month to complain not only about that, but about how they kept moving the fix date. I wasn't happy until I got at least 75% off my bill. This went on for a about a year and eventually they gave me a very generous recurring discount if I promised to stop complaining.

Fast forward a few years and I had to sacrifice a portion of that discount to upgrade to 200mb last month. I don't really mind though, for the 3+ years we've lived here we've always received ~10% faster speeds than we pay for, so no complaints.
 
Done this when the service hasn't been acceptable, but not complained for the sake of complaining.

Amazon when I had prime would always extend my subscription for an extra month. Only paid for prime twice in the 4 years I had it. Would be default always order through them and so sometimes things inevitably went wrong.

Recently though I bought a new phone for SWMBO and it came in out then out of stock several times and wasn't dispatched, despite receiving multiple emails saying they were preparing to send it etc.

Complained. They promised it would go out on the next batch which was due 2 days later and also stuck it on express delivery (ordering to Portugal on cheap delivery normally takes about a week) and it was sent out Friday afternoon and arrived Monday morning. Chuffed :)
 
Delivery driver turned up hour and a half after the time that was on my DPD text. I'm a VERY busy and professional guy who owns a business (open mic night drummer). When he turned up, i sarcastically said 'only an hour and a half late'. He looked like he was having a pretty bad day but thats his own fault for taking so long with my delivery. He rudely offered to take the parcel back, so i made a complaint to DPD over the phone and on their website. Still waiting on my gift basket and best human being award for the way i behaved.
 
Been with SSE hydro since September the 23 this year and already racked up £140 in compensation due to their woeful customer service.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
Delivery driver turned up hour and a half after the time that was on my DPD text. I'm a VERY busy and professional guy who owns a business (open mic night drummer). When he turned up, i sarcastically said 'only an hour and a half late'. He looked like he was having a pretty bad day but thats his own fault for taking so long with my delivery. He rudely offered to take the parcel back, so i made a complaint to DPD over the phone and on their website. Still waiting on my gift basket and best human being award for the way i behaved.
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:D
 
The only time I've ever complained about something was when I was a kid (I was upset and advised me to do so) and Skips were doing a promotion with some sort of pogs in them, iirc it was The Mask set. Every bag was supposed to have a pog in.

I didn't have one so wrote a letter and sent it in, a week later Skips had sent the full set to me and a 24 pack box as a sorry.
 
Glanza said:
The only time I've ever complained about something was when I was a kid (I was upset and advised me to do so) and Skips were doing a promotion with some sort of pogs in them, iirc it was The Mask set. Every bag was supposed to have a pog in.

I didn't have one so wrote a letter and sent it in, a week later Skips had sent the full set to me and a 24 pack box as a sorry.
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Sweet, pogs were awesome.

Are cereal and crisp manufacturers allowed to still put toys in stuff or is it banned due to choking hazard or whatever?

Have not seen anything like that in years.
 
We had the Hilton give us a free nights stay at anywhere in the world. Me and the girlfriend were in Germany and at about 1am some random bloke walked straight into the middle of the room. He then noticed my girlfriend was in bed, and I had come out of the bathroom in my boxers staring at him. It was one of those WTF moments.

In fairness, the bloke was as shocked as we were, apologised profusely and left immediately. The next day when we were checking out I mentioned it and the guy on the desk said he had heard about it. Without even looking up from his computer screen, he "sincerely apologised" for the mix up and insisted it was the computers fault. The end. That didn't really cut it for me, so I wrote an email to Hilton customer services and they offered a free night at any Hilton worldwide.

So of course, we chose Hilton Park Lane in a room overlooking Hyde Park :D

Oh, nPower also gave us 2 years worth of free gas, £100 compensation and £40 of High Street vouchers. In fairness, that was their fault that they weren't able to produce a bill for us for 2 years, then when they finally did, it was completely wrong.
 
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Sharkoon

I use a set of Sharkoon X-tatic digital surround headphones for gaming. Got them years ago when I was still playing the Xbox 360.
The mic broke, due to my dropping them to be fair.

I hunted and hunted google for a replacement mic, no joy, they simply didn't seem to be available.

"I know" I thought, "this is silly, I'll just email Sharkoon in Germany and ask where I can source one from. They'll know who stocks them."
They responded asking for my snail mail address and sent a free replacement mic, no carriage charge or anything.

I fell off my chair, felt like a Rolls Royce or Bugatti Veyron owner being kept sweet by the manufacturer. Never had treatment like that before and haven't since.
 
Moved in to a new house in August and BT advised they could only offer Standard ADSL broadband.

Had an Engineer visit who told me I could get Infinity at the max speed available!

Called BT who have given me Infinity 2 for 18 months at £18 per month which is £7 cheaper than their current online deal and given me the new Hub as well and charged no fees!

A lot of people complain about BT but they've been brilliant with me so far (granted I'm only 2 months in!)
 
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Now that majority of things are owned by major businesses it's almost too easy to complain and get free rewards, points, discounts, credits, upgrades etc.

I've never not flown in the past couple of years without getting upgraded for free or super cheap. Car reservations, hotels, phone bills or whatever. If you take the effort everything can be had as they literally just want to keep you as a customer.
 
Casdawer said:
Moved in to a new house in August and BT advised they could only offer Standard ADSL broadband.

Had an Engineer visit who told me I could get Infinity at the max speed available!

Called BT who have given me Infinity 2 for 18 months at £18 per month which is £7 cheaper than their current online deal and given me the new Hub as well and charged no fees!

A lot of people complain about BT but they've been brilliant with me so far (granted I'm only 2 months in!)
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Oh how ignorant I was!

Called BT to confirm that the discount has been applied and low and behold there is no evidence that this call ever took place and there are no notes on my account :mad:

So, now on hold to wait and see what the 'supervisor' says!
 
Virgin media.

Complained about their imminent price hikes, I'm out of contract. Was paying £130 (was going up to £133) a month. They've cut it to £87 a month and I've kept the same package. :)
 
Casdawer said:
Oh how ignorant I was!

Called BT to confirm that the discount has been applied and low and behold there is no evidence that this call ever took place and there are no notes on my account :mad:

So, now on hold to wait and see what the 'supervisor' says!
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Good luck, you're gonna need it. BT are spectacularly crap.
 
had a leaky steam knob valve on my coffee machine so rang Fracino up to ask for advice and a part number for a replacement seal and got sent a whole new steam arm with an improved design, around £100 in total to buy just the part.

had a few other issues ending up returning items and such and got items exchanged without issue but i would expect nothing less, too many people are afraid to ask and just go out and replace an item before taking it back.
 
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