How long do you hold a grudge against online / offline retailers?
- Thread starter Ice Tea
- Start date
It depends on what the issue was and how they dealt with it. I won't use one of OCUKs competitors anymore as they took payment for an item that was soon to be released then kept pushing the delivery date back saying they were waiting on stock. I decided to order elsewhere but they refused to refund me three times when requested via email and even pushed back against it when I rang up.
I still hold a grudge against that group for repeatedly swapping a dead Snes with returned, dead Snes units, including one that I'd returned a few days earlier (I think it took 5 trips to get one that was actually new*, and replacements 2 and 4 were the same dead unit).Apparently my Uncle still refuses to buy anything from Currys as they messed him about on a refund back in the mid 90's.
Part of the reason for the grudge holding is up that that they did something similar with my brother about 5 years later, and a friend spent weeks being told something he'd returned for repairs was being fixed before he spotted it on a shelf behind the counter with a note he could read that said "don't tll Mr X that his device hasn't been sent off yet" (mid 2000's).
*as the one I returned was only 5 days old when it died.
Amazon is a special exemption though. To be fair to them, they've never done me dirty... yet. And it's great as you can get so many different products there.
In fact Amazon is a special exemption as I tend not to use online retailers unless they use PayPal.
In fact Amazon is a special exemption as I tend not to use online retailers unless they use PayPal.
Same here where they messed me around over a camera in the 90's. I avoided them for about 20 years after that. I will use them now but reluctantly and only if there is a particularly good deal not available from a better retailer.Apparently my Uncle still refuses to buy anything from Currys as they messed him about on a refund back in the mid 90's.
Amazon have some shady practices (such as variable pricing which I am convinced will change if you keep showing an interest in an item). But their customer services have always been great when something goes wrong.
Apparently my Uncle still refuses to buy anything from Currys as they messed him about on a refund back in the mid 90's.
Hi
Ah, now THIS is a topic I can sink my teeth in to. I absolutely detest crap customer service with a passion, to the point where my wife's even called me Karen once.
In the first category are companies which I have no say over, like Thames Water, who as far as I'm concerned exist for one reason only: there is no competition. The absolute bottom of the barrel junk, couldn't burn their eyebrows off with a nuke. I've got another run in coming up with them soon.
The second worst category are those where I do have a choice, but there are so few companies supplying that sector that there really is no incentive for them to give good customer service, these are ISPs, energy providers, that kind of thing. I will never touch Talktalk again, nor Carphone Warehouse (same company). These are the companies whose telephones will tell you on any day of any week of any year that they're experiencing high call volumes and will make you wait 10 minutes on hold before speaking to an Indian fella who's got a script and no actual knowledge of the service or product they provide. Of course I can never strop with these people as it's not their fault, it's the board of execs who pinch every single penny at the cost of customer service. With these companies, I try to pick the lesser of the evils and hope I never have to deal with them.
Next up is banks, they're on shaky ground and they know it. The likes of Starling and Monzo are coming for them with new tech, better service, less downtime etc. Banks held a monopoly in this country for far too long, so rather than working on improving their customer experience, they knew that consumers had no choice so didn't care about things like faster service or a more pleasant banking experience. I've banked with Halifax, Lloyds TSB (when they were together still), Natwest, Santander, Barclays (as a matched bettor I use a whole plethora of accounts), and they are all running on tech that hasn't seen an upgrade in decades. They just didn't care, it took these new challenger banks to wake them up, and wake up they did. Since the new kids turned up on the block I've seen tons of little improvements in the various apps I use, such as the ability to freeze bank cards, the retailers will now have their little logos next to them in the bank's apps, etc. Things that the challengers were doing 10 years ago. This of course doesn't change the fact that despite these little differences on the face of it, these are all little band aids and make shift solutions to try and hide the fact that these banks all still run on the banking equivalent of MS DOS. It'll come as no surprise that I am extremely cynical when it comes to banks, and I'm yet to see a reason not to be. They all purport this "we're in this together" rubbish but anyone with half a brain knows that the banks exist for no reason than to stiff their customers for as much as they can get away with to divvy up the monies with their mates at the conference tables. My wife and I both use Starling cards for our daily spends and have done for a few years now, as soon as our debts with Halifax are paid, we're moving over completely. The old establishment banks can take a long walk off a short pier as far as I'm concerned, every single one of them.
Anyway. More optional stuff, someone mentioned Curry's above, the only reason I'll ever purchase anything there is if it's a ridiculous offer or I need something right away and there is no alternative. I absolutely can't stand Curry's. I honestly can't think of another company at this level which spends less on staff training. Some of the things I've experienced in Curry's stores is just... wow. At one point we were looking for a new telly, this was about 6 years ago. My wife and I were in the shop looking at all their lovely 1080p screens (you know, the posh ones back then) and we were just ignored. Not ignored because the reps were busy, but because they just didn't care. They walked past us, they were chatting to each other, laughing and joking around, until I lost it and looked at one about 20m away in the middle of the store and said "when you guys are done having your jollies, would you be so kind as to do your job and sell us a telly?" or something to that effect anyway. Proper all eyes on me moment, was quite funny. The dude got someone from "the tv department" to come and see me, who couldn't tell me the difference between "full hd" and "hd ready". Comet got a lot of money out of us that day and their service was absolutely brilliant. I still to this day think it was such a shame that Comet went under and that lame ass excuse for a company called Curry's still exists. I've been in their stores tons of times over the years and not once come out feeling like I was tended to by someone who either knew what they were talking about, or was being paid to take care of customers.
Smaller companies have to go far to annoy me, I am very patient when it comes to little shops and whatnot trying to make a living, I understand people have crap days, mistakes can be made, etc. It's how it's dealt with that will determine whether or not a company gets more business from me.
A few special mentions however:
Tritton headsets - when my AX 720s died years ago they sent me a new pair of AX Pros within a few days.
Sony - My PS3 died, they sent a driver out who swapped it out with a new one.
Dell - Any laptop that's been in warranty has had someone out the next day, no quibbles.
Amazon - touch and go, they used to be great with replacing or repairing stuff, but my last one was an NVME SSD which didn't turn up and it took about three weeks for them to refund it after I blew my fuse.
Enacfire headphones - Bought a pair of E18s, one of them didn't work, the next day they sent out a pair of E19s. Turned out to be a dud too, so they refunded those too, so I have two pairs of broken headphones which at one point I wanted to see if I could repair. Despite the products letting me down, their service was unparalleled so as I'm typing this, I'm listening to my tunes on a brand new pair of E20s (fantastic headphones for the money).
Probably loads more I can think of, but to the thread question, I rarely give a company business once I've written it off unless I have no choice. How quickly I write them off depends on their willingness to take care of me as a customer, and by paying someone 15p an hour in India, giving him a sheet of paper with a load of questions and answers on it and nothing else, you're not even remotely trying and you won't get a penny from me.
Sorry, long post. Passionate subject. I just wish we as a society would tell companies with crap service to jog on. The fact we tolerate it is why we spend so much time dealing with their junk service.
In the first category are companies which I have no say over, like Thames Water, who as far as I'm concerned exist for one reason only: there is no competition. The absolute bottom of the barrel junk, couldn't burn their eyebrows off with a nuke. I've got another run in coming up with them soon.
The second worst category are those where I do have a choice, but there are so few companies supplying that sector that there really is no incentive for them to give good customer service, these are ISPs, energy providers, that kind of thing. I will never touch Talktalk again, nor Carphone Warehouse (same company). These are the companies whose telephones will tell you on any day of any week of any year that they're experiencing high call volumes and will make you wait 10 minutes on hold before speaking to an Indian fella who's got a script and no actual knowledge of the service or product they provide. Of course I can never strop with these people as it's not their fault, it's the board of execs who pinch every single penny at the cost of customer service. With these companies, I try to pick the lesser of the evils and hope I never have to deal with them.
Next up is banks, they're on shaky ground and they know it. The likes of Starling and Monzo are coming for them with new tech, better service, less downtime etc. Banks held a monopoly in this country for far too long, so rather than working on improving their customer experience, they knew that consumers had no choice so didn't care about things like faster service or a more pleasant banking experience. I've banked with Halifax, Lloyds TSB (when they were together still), Natwest, Santander, Barclays (as a matched bettor I use a whole plethora of accounts), and they are all running on tech that hasn't seen an upgrade in decades. They just didn't care, it took these new challenger banks to wake them up, and wake up they did. Since the new kids turned up on the block I've seen tons of little improvements in the various apps I use, such as the ability to freeze bank cards, the retailers will now have their little logos next to them in the bank's apps, etc. Things that the challengers were doing 10 years ago. This of course doesn't change the fact that despite these little differences on the face of it, these are all little band aids and make shift solutions to try and hide the fact that these banks all still run on the banking equivalent of MS DOS. It'll come as no surprise that I am extremely cynical when it comes to banks, and I'm yet to see a reason not to be. They all purport this "we're in this together" rubbish but anyone with half a brain knows that the banks exist for no reason than to stiff their customers for as much as they can get away with to divvy up the monies with their mates at the conference tables. My wife and I both use Starling cards for our daily spends and have done for a few years now, as soon as our debts with Halifax are paid, we're moving over completely. The old establishment banks can take a long walk off a short pier as far as I'm concerned, every single one of them.
Anyway. More optional stuff, someone mentioned Curry's above, the only reason I'll ever purchase anything there is if it's a ridiculous offer or I need something right away and there is no alternative. I absolutely can't stand Curry's. I honestly can't think of another company at this level which spends less on staff training. Some of the things I've experienced in Curry's stores is just... wow. At one point we were looking for a new telly, this was about 6 years ago. My wife and I were in the shop looking at all their lovely 1080p screens (you know, the posh ones back then) and we were just ignored. Not ignored because the reps were busy, but because they just didn't care. They walked past us, they were chatting to each other, laughing and joking around, until I lost it and looked at one about 20m away in the middle of the store and said "when you guys are done having your jollies, would you be so kind as to do your job and sell us a telly?" or something to that effect anyway. Proper all eyes on me moment, was quite funny. The dude got someone from "the tv department" to come and see me, who couldn't tell me the difference between "full hd" and "hd ready". Comet got a lot of money out of us that day and their service was absolutely brilliant. I still to this day think it was such a shame that Comet went under and that lame ass excuse for a company called Curry's still exists. I've been in their stores tons of times over the years and not once come out feeling like I was tended to by someone who either knew what they were talking about, or was being paid to take care of customers.
Smaller companies have to go far to annoy me, I am very patient when it comes to little shops and whatnot trying to make a living, I understand people have crap days, mistakes can be made, etc. It's how it's dealt with that will determine whether or not a company gets more business from me.
A few special mentions however:
Tritton headsets - when my AX 720s died years ago they sent me a new pair of AX Pros within a few days.
Sony - My PS3 died, they sent a driver out who swapped it out with a new one.
Dell - Any laptop that's been in warranty has had someone out the next day, no quibbles.
Amazon - touch and go, they used to be great with replacing or repairing stuff, but my last one was an NVME SSD which didn't turn up and it took about three weeks for them to refund it after I blew my fuse.
Enacfire headphones - Bought a pair of E18s, one of them didn't work, the next day they sent out a pair of E19s. Turned out to be a dud too, so they refunded those too, so I have two pairs of broken headphones which at one point I wanted to see if I could repair. Despite the products letting me down, their service was unparalleled so as I'm typing this, I'm listening to my tunes on a brand new pair of E20s (fantastic headphones for the money).
Probably loads more I can think of, but to the thread question, I rarely give a company business once I've written it off unless I have no choice. How quickly I write them off depends on their willingness to take care of me as a customer, and by paying someone 15p an hour in India, giving him a sheet of paper with a load of questions and answers on it and nothing else, you're not even remotely trying and you won't get a penny from me.
Sorry, long post. Passionate subject. I just wish we as a society would tell companies with crap service to jog on. The fact we tolerate it is why we spend so much time dealing with their junk service.
@Diddums should've bought your SSD from somewhere reputable
Work gig innit
If I could convince my company to use OCUK I would, but our IT guys are... erm.... well, how do I put this politely.... they're IT Guys.
Soldato
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Forever. Unless it’s super urgent that I get X and only detested retailer Y has stock.
A favourite example would be the wife or daughters telling me that the printer needed new ink cartridges at 4 pm on a Sunday so they could print something they MUST hand in at work/school first thing Monday morning.
This would result my jumping in my car and swearing a blue streak to the troika of muppetry that is Curry’s/PC World/Carphone Warehouse at Beckon retail park and back. Normally, I wouldn’t urinate on said retailer if it was on fire, but it was the only place open then that was guaranteed to have the cartridges required.
A favourite example would be the wife or daughters telling me that the printer needed new ink cartridges at 4 pm on a Sunday so they could print something they MUST hand in at work/school first thing Monday morning.
This would result my jumping in my car and swearing a blue streak to the troika of muppetry that is Curry’s/PC World/Carphone Warehouse at Beckon retail park and back. Normally, I wouldn’t urinate on said retailer if it was on fire, but it was the only place open then that was guaranteed to have the cartridges required.
There's the odd brand that I still refuse to buy even a decade or more after bad experiences. Gigabyte springs to mind, I'm told that their products and support are great now but I'll never know because they're never getting any of my money again!
I used to buy from MyProtein for years, until one day my order never arrived and I had to unfortunately deal with their utterly atrocious customer service which largely consisted of automatic replies and prerecorded messages on the phone that never got me anywhere. It took over a month to get my money back. Never again.
Soldato
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I found Gigabyte's support great, which is good because I had to use it 4 times for the same motherboard! I said I wasn't going to use them again but when I switched back to AMD i ended up getting one of their boards again as it was best priced for the features/what I wanted. Had zero problems with the current one.
Permabanned
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I never hold a grudge, with anyone or any online or offline store.
Associate
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As others have said, definitely depends how the company handles issues.
Used to buy a lot of stuff from ****** but had some really poor service from them (and they use a rubbish courier) and when I discovered places like Scan and OC sold pretty much the same stuff (and use DPD) it seemed a no-brainer. Not really a grudge but would only order from there as a last resort
edit: love the 'profanity' filter, guessing others have had similar experience
Used to buy a lot of stuff from ****** but had some really poor service from them (and they use a rubbish courier) and when I discovered places like Scan and OC sold pretty much the same stuff (and use DPD
) it seemed a no-brainer. Not really a grudge but would only order from there as a last resortedit: love the 'profanity' filter, guessing others have had similar experience
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