Most ridiculous lack of customer service you've encountered?

Angilion

Angilion

Angilion

Man of Honour
Joined
5 Dec 2003
Posts
21,025
Location
Just to the left of my PC
I'll kick it off with my current experience with npower.

I've phoned them 3 times so far this week.

1st time: 5 minutes on hold, then told that the system is down and I'll have to call back the next day.

2nd time (2 days later): The same thing.

3rd time (day afterwards): Automated voice telling me that the current wait time is between 19 and 30 minutes. So I hung up.

It's 1930 on a weekday. Why on earth do they have a 30 minute hold time?
 
Russinating said:
Everywhere. I'm a magnet for terrible customer service, especially at restaurants. Don't know why.
Click to expand...

I like the US way of restaurant customer service.
The staff are polite, refill your coke for free and will change anything on the menu for you with a smile on their face. I know you must tip, but I tend to tip a bit extra. If the food or service is poor, you don't pay the full bill.
Here I seem to get a 16 year old college dropout with several facial piercings and a stupid emo fringe covering half their face, along with a suitably offputting 'couldn't give a flying ****' attitude. I leave £0.00 tip unless the service is very good. If the food or service is poor, you are expected to pay the full bill.

My mini rant over:
AOL - Useless. They say 'I will just pass you to my colleage' then the accept goes from somewhere in India to Ireland. I literally shout YES when I get the Irish help centre as they know the difference between a kilobit and a kilobyte.
T Mobile - They fix my bill as they overcharge me, only for the next month to come and NO CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE. Rinse and repeat 4 times until the original thing they said they would do gets done.
Comet - My TV died within 48 hours and they refused to swap it on the spot, fobbing me off onto the customer service hotline. Also it took me 10-15 times calling up the store (via the stupid helpline as you cannot call the store directly) to get a receipt sent to me for the new TV after they delivered it.
 
Last edited:
Angilion said:
I'll kick it off with my current experience with npower.

I've phoned them 3 times so far this week.

1st time: 5 minutes on hold, then told that the system is down and I'll have to call back the next day.

2nd time (2 days later): The same thing.

3rd time (day afterwards): Automated voice telling me that the current wait time is between 19 and 30 minutes. So I hung up.

It's 1930 on a weekday. Why on earth do they have a 30 minute hold time?
Click to expand...

Npower have been having loads of issues with their online accounts side of things meaning people either cannot login or are having massive issues doing so, I would guess this would mean massive call volumes, I was on hold for 15 minutes to npower yesteday and they dealt with me fine!
 
Sports Direct Outlet Store.

Went in on my lunch to get some new trainers, picked some that were already out to save having to wait for an assistant and got in the queue. There was one guy already at the counter and an older gentleman in front of me, one guy serving.

The person at the counter was disputing the price of one of his items so the checkout guy called over someone to help him out. This 'help' took a good few minutes to come during which there was zero activity on the tills carried out and by this point the queue had grown to around 12 people.

Now we have two guys on one till, tapping at it like it's something they've never used before and the dispute doesn't seem to be any further to being resolved, this went on for another 5 minutes. The man in front started grumbling to me and I could hear people complaining between themselves behind me.

Another few minutes pass before the 'help' decides to go off to check the price on the shelves of said disputed item (which of course was right over the other side of the shop) and as he does the checkout guy just stands there looking vacant. The queue is an aisle long now with around 25-30 people in it.

I finally crack and say to the checkout guy "Excuse me, whilst your colleague is resolving this issue could you not jump on to one of the other tills (there were 4 free) and start serving us?" He looks at me blankly then just ignores me.

The customer being served turned and agreed, apologising to me and saying why he can't understand why the checkout guy couldn't serve us now he had someone looking at his issue. The gentleman in front turns and says "well done, you were right to say something" (clearly glad he didn't have to do it).

Another few minutes pass and the 'help' comes back this time with another guy who finally jumps on one of the spare tills and starts serving everyone else. The crowd all cheer in unison.

Should have been a 5-10 minute job, ending up taking about 40 minutes.
 
Last edited:
Npower here as well.

According to them we don;t have the meter we should have.

After 7 years of phonecalls to customer services and managers, 12 visits from engineers, and a file almost an inch thick of correspondance, we are yet top receive a bill for our electric.

I have now given up on them but they still ask for our meter reading every 6 months.
 
VIRGIN broadband - many years ago.

Was moving out of my nans, phoned up and cancelled the broadband, they said ok, then billed me. Phoned up, complained and requested the account closed, they apologised, said ok and billed me. 12 months later I finally get the account closed and NO refund even though no one had been using it.

ONE.COM

had webspace with them. Had to phone up x months before it was due to renewal to close it which I did. Was told it was closed and wouldn't be charged, low and behold I get a letter 2 days after the renewal date saying I owed them £50. Lots of arguements back and forth and in the end just paid as I was after a mortgage and they were making threats about legal action. Just bad mouth them whenever I can now :D
 
Last edited:
Wiggle

Ordered well over £400 of road bike odds n ends then I spent the next 2 weeks arguing with them that they had indeed taken the money out of my account and should really send me my goods.

Total bunch of inept morons, ended up getting my money back after almost 3 weeks.

Oh and the best bit is its almost impossible to phone them, so the above was done through email.
 
BT. Had issues with my internet for about 2 years; whenever it would rain I would suffer from disconnections. It took about 10 calls to convince them to come out and change the overhead cable from my house to the telegraph pole, as soon as they did that I had no issues. At one point I was seriously considering cutting the cable to get them to come out and play dumb.

BT advisors told me:

- Have you tried on a different computer? (the router resyncs!)
- Have you changed the microfilters (done about 10 times)
- It must be wiring in your house (it doesn't rain in my house)
- It's a faulty phone

Bunch of muppets.

Honourable to Evans Cycles for forgetting to build a bike, and an ASDA cafe employee forgetting about me and making me wait 20 mins for beans on toast.
 
T mobile.

They said I could get a new contract sim and transfer my old t-mobile payg number over in less than 24 hours.
I buys the sim, then ask CS to transfer my number.
They say you can only do that by transferring your payg number to another network (plus costs with that) then move it back to tmobile.....

Now that's a serious load of crap right there. that lost me my number I've had for over 15 years.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom