What’s the worst customer service you’ve ever received?

[SuperMeerkat]

This is actually laughable as it was so bad. Today I was in NatWest as my husband is doing a Masters through his work and wanted to change his account to a student account. Anyway, we were told a 10 minute wait and after 40 we were still waiting. I enquires why this was and was told ‘they were busy’. I asked why the man couldn’t have kept us (and all the other customers) informed of the waiting time and he then put his hand up to my face, walked off and started talking to someone else. I said I hadn’t finished my query and he said ‘he didn’t have time to update people on waiting times’ despite sitting 6 feet away from everyone. Anyhow, he then yelled at me and my husband that we weren’t welcome at the branch and he was going to shut our account 😂😂 Crazy.

Vodafone. I've now got a pounding heart and a churning stomach just thinking about their awfulness.
Anyway, they've lost 4 phone contracts

Scottish Power, who took 3 years to admit that we couldn't possibly owe them £5k when we'd been on a pay-as-you-go meter! After 3 years they finally closed the account and sent us a £10 cheque as compensation. Then a year later, they wrote to tell us we owed them £4k. Unbelievable! The tears I've wept over that bloody company.

Virgin media - once had a charge for £28 to a premium number for over 4 hrs, it was a sky bet phone number, told them my partner rang them for around 10 mins, not 4 hrs, they refused to accept that we weren't on the phone for 4 hrs and said maybe skybet didn't put their phone down, rang sky bet and they said it's not possible as their system is automated and wouldn't allow that to happen, they even checked the phone call and confirmed it was only a short call, and sent us an email with the evidence to give to virgin media, in the end sky bet said they would give us £28 to cover the cost and then eventually virgin media admitted their error and refunded the £28 too :) bingo

Vodaphone. I'd been with them 7 years. Went to Africa on holiday, had crappy signal so turned phone off. When we landed back in the UK my phone wouldn't connect to data or WiFi. They sent me a new sim twice, sent handset off twice, reset my account, gave me a brand new handset(even though it was literally months old)... Nothing. Nobody could fix it. They think my phone tried to do an update to my account in Africa and corrupted. Wouldn't let me come out of contract even though it wasn't fit for purpose. Seven months this dragged on. I was arguing with them daily. So I told them they could stick it up their arses. They're still chasing me for £200 now and this was 4 years ago.

PayPal for me. Very distressing at the time. I was sold faulty electric goods, seller admitted they were dodgy, then PayPal decided they would just close my case and overnight wiped it from my account..no details left..bizarre. Luckily my bank eventually did a charge back of the five hundred pounds.

BT are unfuckingbelievably shit at communicating considering their business is based on communication!!

Very were awful and I made it a point to pay off my balance and close my account. I ordered a sofa and was to be delivered same weekend so I gave away my sofa to a needy family. Needless to say the new sofa didn't turn up for three fucking months and very didn't give a shiny shit that we had nothing in the front rooms. They weren't even sorry or offered any compensation. It was the last straw of a long line of issues with them

Two spring to mind.

AOL, who phoned me to offer a deal on renewal of my broadband, I agreed a 12 month deal with a new router to be sent out. Never received the router and the broadband was shite, so I tried phoning to complain and got through to an overseas call centre who said they couldn't understand me and had no record of the agreement for the router to be sent out. After the 12 months I switched to Sky broadband, AOL had the cheek to invoice me for £69 as an early release fee - they had signed me up to an 18 month contract not 12 months as we had agreed. I phoned again and they were adamant it was 18 months so I asked them to provide the transcript of the recorded call proving that. They put the phone down. This went on for a while and I kept refusing to pay, eventually they sold it to a debt collector who when I explained the situation said they would try to get hold of the transcript for me. They then contacted me writing it off so I assume they found the call. AOL are complete shysters though.

Second was Carolina Dress Room where I bought a dress for a special occasion with 2 months notice. It never arrived and I was told they had cancelled my order because they had oversold the dress, but they hadn't contacted me or refunded me. I was then offered the choice of any other dress so I chose one, and it took so long to arrive that I ended up sending it back because it was after the special occasion. I would never order from there again.

EasyJet group bookings line. Trying to input details for checkin on an online form that wasn’t working only to be told repeatedly that the only way to do it was through the form. Hours of time back and forth between the website and the phone line almost had me in tears.

Arnold Clark. They are a shower of arseholes, during a service they failed to fit windscreen wipers properly and didn't put a light casing back together properly. Driving home in torrential rain on a stretch of 50mph road the windscreen wipers both fell off the brackets. I managed to fix them then discovered the light casing had leaked and the indicator wasn't working.
Workshop had closed by this time so took the car back next day (they told me to do this) garage denied causing the issues. After much arguing they relented after a mechanic admitted he had worked on the problem parts. I had to wait 6hours in the show room and was obviously looking glum when another customer got chatting, I told him of the issues and the garage staff threw my keys at me and threatened to phone the police if I didn't leave the premises
I have never, and will never buy a car from Arnold Clark again.

When I was about 18 went to the local pub mid afternoon for a quick non alcoholic drink with my then boyfriend.
We were sat close to each other talking when suddenly the landlord comes over to us, in front of everyone, told us how dare we sit there and kiss and be all over each other in his pub and if we carried on he'd kick us out.

We literally had been sat there talking close up. We hadn't kissed once or barely touched as we weren't really a PDA kind of couple.

To my regret, because we were so shocked we drank up and left and didn't say a word! My former young self was a wimp!!

But I was mortified at the time.

I had a similar experience to IceCreamConewithaflake with BT. And the hours spent on customer service... Anyway, after that, I phoned up to tell them I was changing provider. They set their retention team on me.

They offered me a deal. Nowhere near as good as the other provider.

They offered me faster broadband. Not available in my area.

They offered me BT Sport. Don't want it.

They explained that, yes, they were more expensive but you did get the Customer Service for it. I always try to be polite to the poor people manning the phones as they're not usually the ones that have messed up but I'm afraid I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

At that point they got a bit Bad Cop and threatened that I'd have to pay a charge for leaving the contract early. As it happened, as I knew full well, my contract term was up. BT ended up owing me money. Teehee!

I'd had a previous bad experience with them at an ex-DPs address where they weren't our provider but we did have one of their phones hard wired into the wall rather than connecting via a socket (old property and old phone line). We were redecorating so wanted to get rid of it. Three times, the engineer didn't turn up. On the third occasion, DP failed to get to an event important to me because he was waiting for them. At that point, I lost my shit, yanked the phone out the wall, drop kicked it down the garden and told them to fetch it at their leisure.

I’m glad Scottish power have been mentioned because we’ve also had loads of problems with them. We went through a phase of getting calls from them every day basically trying to pressurise us into getting a smart meter, they have hung up on us, they have lied to us, they have missed appointments, ‘lost’ our bank details- just an overall awful company. When we complained about the list of errors on their part (bearing in mind we’re not the type of people to ever complain), they sent us 25 quid as a good Will gesture, lucky us the amount of stress they caused was unbelievable.

White Stuff - it's great customer service until you want to return a faulty item.

Vodafone

I believe a lot of people have fallen for their dirty trick of making you believe that an old contract is cancelled when you take out a new one in store and then you wonder why your bill is so fucking high and it is because they are still charging the old contract because you didn't phone up even though you spoke to their staff in person and they said nothing. It's deliberate.

Dunelm

Sent me dining chairs with only 2 legs each not four, had to chase my arse for the fucking legs

Hermes

@VanyaHargreeves - that they actually sent you dining chairs with only two legs each -

I applaud you for being able to chase your arse - I would have fallen on mine with a two legged dining chair & probably would not have been able to run

Surely that comes under not fit for purpose ( the dining chairs - not me ) or various other things - that takes the biscuit - sorry I am sure it was horrid but made me laugh

Air Canada.

Followed closely by Ryanair and BT!

@BasiliskStare

Yep we got them all assembled

So where's the other legs ?

Nowhere to be seen

They lay half assembled against a wall for about two/three weeks

I've got an amazing wardrobe I bought from Dunelm at the same time

But never again

A website called Omega flight store.

They sold us return flights that didn't exist! We were left abroad with 2 children for 23 hours in the airport until the next available flight to the UK. It was a nightmare! We felt like talking to robots as all we got told on the phone is that the flight was fine and landed back and we were confirmed on it! WHILE WE'RE ON THE PHONE WITH THEM FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY!

After returning safely, my DH rang again wanting to threaten to sue them, the agent called him "Liar" and to "get lost". This was before DH opened his mouth to say a thing!

Oh just realised they were probably self assembly - but even so - I apologise @VanyaHargreaves for giggling at your misfortune but you did make me laugh

I shall avoid Dunelm - not sure Christmas lunch would be the lovely family occasion I would like if all the family were teetering on 2 legged dining chairs. So sorry @VanyaHargreaves but you have given me the giggles - sorry sorry - I appreciate it will have been a frustrating and irritating experience - have and or indeed on me

BT
I was unable to get hold of my elderly, housebound mother by telephone so sent one of my DC's round who discovered her phone line wasn't working.
I rang BT and in a phone call to one of their overseas call centres, lasting over 45 minutes, their best advice was that I should ring the consulate.

It took a further 2 days of calls to get an engineer out. He said that the reason she had no phone was because someone had set fire to the telegraph pole. This had apparently been reported several days previously, but no one had got round to ordering a new pole yet. Or informing the affected customers.
It was only because one of the lines belonged to an office for our local MP and she started causing a fuss that it was fixed as quickly as it was (well over a week).

Sainsburys, went in to do shopping on Mad Friday at Christmas, bought some serving dishes & glasses for Christmas dinner, plus christmas food shop, stood in a mile long queue to pay. When I got to the checkout I asked the operative to wrap the pots & glasses up to protect them on the way home, she refused, I gave them back to her & refused to buy them, when she finally put the rest of the shopping through & i came to pay, i asked for £50 cashback in £10 notes, I wanted it for kids gifts, she refused & gave me £40 in 20's & £10, I again asked for £10 notes & got told we aren't a bank, take it or leave it. I complained via Facebook & got £25 in nectar points. The checkout operative always asks to be taken off if she sees me in the queue now.

British Gas 25 years ago haven't touched them since. My dear Gma died we settled her bill and cleared her sheltered flat. 6 weeks later a burly short tempered debt collecter banged on the door and terrified the new resident. We had already a) paid the bill b) told them she was deceased. They did say sorry.... Eventually