The increasing incompetence of companies

Haggisman said:
Maybe I'm just getting less tolerant of dealing with other people's ****-ups as I get older, but I've noticed an increasing trend of supposedly reputable companies being downright useless and expecting me as a customer to just be accepting of that.

I've had Virgin refuse to honour their offer for unlimited data on your mobile phone if the internet goes down due to a fault on their end, despite sending them a link to the page on their website which explicitly states they will do so (eventually resolved after an hour on the phone and having to escalate it).

I've had Oculus support tell me they couldn't help with warranty as I didn't purchase from an authorised retailer - OcUK, even though they feature OcUK as an authorised retailer on their site.

I've had numerous instances of Hermes saying they tried to deliver and no-one was in (nonsense), resulting in orders being returned/delayed by several days.

Last week I had to deal with Sky who were charging me extra for HD every month despite me re-negotiating my contract in July and the offer confirmation email I received not mentioning anything about it, and then refusing to honour the original agreement (since resolved after phone call #3 and speaking to someone else).

Now I've had my online Morrison's order just not turn up, no communication from them at all, spoke to them yesterday where they couldn't give me any information, but promising a call back (which of course never materialised), and first thing this morning received a refund out of the blue, no explanation, apology or anything.

Also reading the Royal Mail thread on here where another forum member is having a similar experience.

While this obviously isn't a new thing, it does seem to have become a lot more prevalent in the last 3-4 years, to the point I now expect to have a fight on my hands when something goes wrong and I'm pleasantly surprised when actually I have a positive experience with a company.

I get that things go wrong, and have no problem with that - my issue is that whereas previously companies would try to sort things out properly and come to a solution which kept everyone happy, now they just try to brush you off as if it never happened.

Is this something I'm just imagining, or have others noticed the same?
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Hermes? Reputable?

I buy a fair bit on Ebay. I actively avoid sellers that use Hermes as their courier.
 
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cheesefest said:
With the SLC t&c’s at the time I was at Uni, the debt dies with you. Only paid off about £850 in 15 years as when the min salary goes up for repayments, my salary was/is a few hundred short.

Only paid repayment when I had bonuses! Plus working loads of ot when I helped out training new starters at a new call centre in Swansea. Worked in the Leeds cc. Out of the 23 in my team, only four had driving licences- one was me! So the four drivers had two weeks down in Swansea - taking 3 others in hired cars. Then the others had a week there. Worked 8am-9pm ten days with Sundays off. Didn’t get to visit Swansea city centre as call centre and hotel were in the same area
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Good use of degree. Thumbs up!
 
Orangeade said:
Good use of degree. Thumbs up!
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Got made redundant in 2007 and there was nothing available bar my current job. Thought I would use this job as a stopgap to see if anything better comes up. Some years, didn’t look at jobs as illnesses and surgeries put this off.

15 years later, I’m still there!

Got colleagues who started there to help with the bills when children were young. They have grandchildren of the same age as their children when started!
 
Jelly4mybelly said:
Hermes? Reputable?
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I did say "supposedly" ;)

And yes, likewise, I won't buy from anywhere who uses Hermes/Evri, and if they don't say who they ship with and it turns out to be them, I will cancel the order when I receive the shipping notification.

The site I get our cat food from has just switched from DPD to Evri as one of their couriers (why the **** would you do that?!), meaning the only other option is Yodel... :(
 
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Had some very excellent customer service from Vape Superstore. Ordered some disposable vapes. Got parcel yesterday and there were packs of Vont pods, which I have never heard of. Web chatted with them and apologised. One flavour was out of stock so requested another flavour. E-mail from them to say it was shipped and be delivered tomorrow morning, along with a return label to put onto package with the return label for posting Vont pods back in the post.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
It probably comes from a 3rd party fulfilment centre that has all kind of nonsense in it.
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Yep this seems to be the case, Tassimo orders used to come from the Netherlands direct from them, but the last two came from "Great Bear Distribution" or something who appear to be exactly what you've said.
 
Haggisman said:
In theory - I wonder how many deliveries (and customers) they have to lose to break even?

Also, if the customer is choosing which service they want, and paying for it, then why does it matter?
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I used Hermes (Evri) and Royal Mail when I owned my business - along with FedEx, DPD and DHL.
I collated data relating to late deliveries, missing parcels, damage etc so I could go back to account managers for compensation - and believe it or not, they're all as bad as each other.

The difference in loss / damage rates between even the budget carriers and premium bunch was so small it was statistically insignificant.
Late deliveries were a Royal Mail special feature; the rest were usually on time, but Royal Mail would frequently have the odd parcel turn up 4 weeks later (and that's within the UK).

I left Yodel out of the above list - they were consistently awful and I had so many issues with just getting things collected that they were sacked off within weeks. The small amount of data I did collect for their time was also terrible in terms of loss / late deliveries / damage.
 
The past few years and the rise of internet shopping along with the lockdown has really started a race to the bottom for delivery firms. Businesses want to offer free delivery online and then push their couriers for the cheapest possible service. Loads of self employed drivers who are lucky to clear minimum wage and even if they manage it generally can’t earn more than £10 an hour even with 200 parcels they’re getting paid £2 per parcel along with can hire, insurance etc. I’m honestly surprised anyone does it for more than a few weeks.
 
MissChief said:
The past few years and the rise of internet shopping along with the lockdown has really started a race to the bottom for delivery firms. Businesses want to offer free delivery online and then push their couriers for the cheapest possible service. Loads of self employed drivers who are lucky to clear minimum wage and even if they manage it generally can’t earn more than £10 an hour even with 200 parcels they’re getting paid £2 per parcel along with can hire, insurance etc. I’m honestly surprised anyone does it for more than a few weeks.
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Especially when some couriers use rental vans. Does the courier themselves or the courier firm pay for the rental?

Saw a courier delivering a parcel driving a clapped out M reg van.
 
cheesefest said:
Especially when some couriers use rental vans. Does the courier themselves or the courier firm pay for the rental?

Saw a courier delivering a parcel driving a clapped out M reg van.
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There are a few owner drivers but some other drivers rent their vans directly from the companies as well, often a couple of hundred a week. I'm shocked they can make any money at all and it's often why they'll literally knock, drop your parcel, take a photo and leave in less than a minute or if your house is 20 minutes away from their other deliveries then they just won't deliver it.
 
First negative experience with DPD today. Driver took a picture of front door, didn’t ring bell, didn’t knock, didn’t leave a card. Depot manager was useless and told me that he believed the lying driver because he had a picture.

I was sat six feet from the door for the hour before delivery was attempted.

Also, since when was the option to collect from depot just dropped entirely? If i’d have known it wasn’t coming back after covid (presumably because it stops them being able to hide behind a phone) I would have likely just used someone else.
 
Tute said:
First negative experience with DPD today. Driver took a picture of front door, didn’t ring bell, didn’t knock, didn’t leave a card. Depot manager was useless and told me that he believed the lying driver because he had a picture.

I was sat six feet from the door for the hour before delivery was attempted.

Also, since when was the option to collect from depot just dropped entirely? If i’d have known it wasn’t coming back after covid (presumably because it stops them being able to hide behind a phone) I would have likely just used someone else.
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DPD are an absolute shower these days - my favourite day at work this year was when I got to tell our area manager that we were moving to FedEx because of his own incompetence and that of the company in general.

From top to bottom, an absolutely useless outfit - their overall delivery success rate was the same as the others, but getting sense from them or asking them to sort out a **** up was entirely futile.
 
Yeah - used to have good results with DPD - not so much lately - still waiting on a package from the 14th of October which hasn't turned up, seller despatched another on the 26th, hasn't turned up either - both just saying it is late. Hopefully it is DPD eating this rather than the seller when it seems increasingly likely neither turn up...
 
Lloyds Bank. I've been trying to get an additional business credit card holder on the account since May. We have sent in 3 applications, first by post the other 2 in branch. Each time nothing is received by card services.

Have made an official complaint. My local branch manager, who sent the last one in, resubmitted it 2 weeks ago, rang and confirmed they had received it. I rang yesterday to see how it's progressing....told they had no details of any application....
 
mattyprice4004 said:
I used Hermes (Evri) and Royal Mail when I owned my business - along with FedEx, DPD and DHL.
I collated data relating to late deliveries, missing parcels, damage etc so I could go back to account managers for compensation - and believe it or not, they're all as bad as each other.

The difference in loss / damage rates between even the budget carriers and premium bunch was so small it was statistically insignificant.
Late deliveries were a Royal Mail special feature; the rest were usually on time, but Royal Mail would frequently have the odd parcel turn up 4 weeks later (and that's within the UK).

I left Yodel out of the above list - they were consistently awful and I had so many issues with just getting things collected that they were sacked off within weeks. The small amount of data I did collect for their time was also terrible in terms of loss / late deliveries / damage.
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That's surprising - although I guess it's more down to the local hub/driver, so while it might average out for a sender, the receiver will have significantly different results depending on which company is used.

As expected, my cat food order from last week has not yet arrived, despite being due on the 29th... Time to find a new supplier :(
 
Freakbro said:
Lloyds Bank. I've been trying to get an additional business credit card holder on the account since May. We have sent in 3 applications, first by post the other 2 in branch. Each time nothing is received by card services.

Have made an official complaint. My local branch manager, who sent the last one in, resubmitted it 2 weeks ago, rang and confirmed they had received it. I rang yesterday to see how it's progressing....told they had no details of any application....
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Fffffffffff…..
 
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