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.

M&S when I was about 13. Went in to buy a bra (maybe my first one?) only for the fitter to eye me up and down and say "It won't be very big I'm afraid."

Totally lost my temper with ASOS last night and sent an angry email with swear words in it.

Today I have had an apology saying that they will refund for items that I never actually ordered and then offered me 25% off my next order.

I took great delight in telling them to shove that where the sun doesn't shine. Never ever will I order with them.
Turns out being polite doesn't get results...

M&S Guiseley. I bought a pack of 80 tea bags. When i opened them to put in tea tin most of the tea bags were empty and loose tea sat in the bottom. I scraped what I could into a carrier bag and returned with the receipt and tea packet.
The woman on customer services COUNTED the tea bags and said they weren't all there.
I offered to shake loose tea onto the counter for her and told her that some of the empty bags went in my bin.
She decided she would replace them this time but in future I should return all packaging, which isn't true the website specifically tells you not to return food wrapping.
I rang customer services to complain and was told someone from the store would ring to apologise, they never did.
The same store had a till that was weighing fruit and veg wrongly. When i pointed out it was illegal they just shrugged.

John Lewis.

We were in the process of buying our first house so buying furniture for the first time and needed everything.

Bought a mattress from John Lewis to be delivered on our moving date. At the time it was ordered it said there were 8 in stock, order went through fine.

Come to moving day and I get a call at 4pm to say they have no mattresses in stock so will not be delivering. They sold my bloody mattress that I’d ordered and paid for! Completely unapologetic and offered to let me upgrade to a newer version of it for £500 extra. Erm no thanks.

Admiral Car Insurance.
Their multicar quote was more than our current insurance renewal, but they said we'd see the saving when we added our second car a few months later, so we went with their pricier fee. When the time came to add 2nd car it was £100+ more than renewal. We rang, assuming there had been an error, but they weren't budging. That's what it was.
We told them no, we weren't adding our 2nd car, then they demanded further payment because they said the first car insurance was taken on the basis we'd add another - yea, the pricier quote!

Another thumbs down to BT.
My elderly and confused (Brother and I had POA) Mum moved from hospital to sheltered housing and was desperate to get a phone line installed ASAP. She was adamant that BT had told her she could be reconnected at short notice and keep her number when she sold her house less than 6 months before. Their very clever salesperson persuaded her to sign up for the full TV and internet package too. She had no use for internet as she didn't have any device that would get her on line and more than 5 TV channels just added to her confusion. However, they would have none of it when we realised what was going on when the bills started coming in.
When I contacted them and explained, they wanted over £200 to end the contract early. I asked that the case be reviewed, saying she didn't have capacity to enter into a contract, hence POA, but they stuck by their previous advice. They weren't even shamed at social media posts. I ended up emailing their CEO and getting a solicitor to point out the legalities, even tho' I already had. Even then they tried asking for £100+ installation costs. I pointed out we'd already plugged our own phone into the pre-existing socket, all they needed was to create the connection their end. The unwanted modem they sent was simply delivered in a box Mum was unable to open (Arthritic hands,) so I challenged their "Installation" fee. Again, needed CEO to get this removed.
I'll never use them again, nor will any of our family members. It wasn't just one rogue CS employee. It was the whole lot of them, from that wanker right at the start who no doubt got a bonus for selling an entirely inappropriate package to a vulnerable and desperate old lady.

@applesandpears33 oh yes, the "Of course before signing you'll need to speak to your husband first...." or "We'll come back when your husband is home.." companies. Arseholes.

And let's not forget the car salesmen who speak directly to DH when I'm the one buying a car even after I keep asking all the questions and DH keeps directing the conversation to me.

It's BT for me too - they often call and ask me to come back, and are astonished to hear I'm still bothered about bad service a few years ago.

NPower - bunch of thieving incompetent bastards!

Alicemelle. DON'T TOUCH THEM WITH A BARGE POLE.
I ordered three items (two tops and a pair of trousers.)
One top fitted, the other was about 5 inches smaller around the hem - they were supposed to be the same size.
I asked for a refund (with photos), but they refused and said I could have a 10% refund on it as the return postage was too expensive.
And graciously said that I could pass the top on to a family member or a friend. Errrr, no, no-one I know would wear that particular style.....

Asda, they are always missing items in my home delivery 18 items once! Then and again it's happened 8 times and I have to claim it back takes days for the money to go into my bank. I don't use them now!

Vision Express. Made an appointment to take mum to have a post cataract eye exam. Her regular optician is closed after a fire.Got up at 7 to drive over to collect mum for 1030 appointment. At 0930 ( almost at mum’s by this point)the phone rang to say the optician had called in sick and the appointment was cancelled . No attempt to reschedule or arrange an appointment at another branch.

@Timeandtune I would think they were busy calling around all appointments that day to cancel rather than make new appointments yet as they would probably not know when the optician would be fit to return to work. Also 9:30am doesn't seem unrealistic either assuming standard business hours and the first half hour spent getting contact details and phoning customers to cancel.
Now bad customer service to me would have been letting you turn up.

Fair comment. I just thought a large chain like VE would have had more than one optician.

I get it. Our local chemists is a Lloyd's Pharmacy but if the chemist is out ill or can't get to our town due to road closures on one side or bad weather we're stuffed. No alternatives and Lloyd's is a big chain too. It seems crazy they don't have a back up. The local workers can open up and sell non prescription stuff but everything else is a no go.

I gave up with ASDA home deliveries. At the time I had three dogs, one big one and two smaller, and I used to order as part of my food shop, three trays of 24 cans of dog food (I did my food shop monthly and that was a month's supply of canned food).

I very regularly got THREE SINGLE CANS. To the extent that I was going back to double check my order to make sure I'd ordered three trays of 24, and not three singles. Nope, I'd ordered 72 cans.

We live a long way from the shops and three single cans wasn't even a day's food for the dogs, so I had to travel to the nearest supermarkets to buy dogfood again. In which case, the whole point of 'home delivery' was negated, so I started shopping 'in real life' again.

Just remembered a cracking one from my local Chinese place years ago, my mum ordered a delivery and it was so late so she called and said where is it? The angry Chinese woman answered and said last night I ordered pizza and it was late I had to wait so you do the same there. And hung up still makes me laugh to this day. The food from there was amazing though

Receptionist at walk in centre. Was pregnant with my second child and was suffering from Hypermesis G (also had it with 1st). After filling in form, receptionist informs me that it's pointless waiting (2hr wait) as it's only morning sickness and the dr wont give me anything so might as well wait to see my normal midwife/gp. It was new years day, saturday, so drs wouldn't be open until the Tuesday. Having had it before knew when it was really bad, so ignored her and waited. Good job I did as got sent to hospital for 3 days!

John Lewis, two episodes 25 years apart. The first one was an attempt to buy a dining table on display in the shop. "Sorry, that's out of stock". "Yeah, but you'll have a sale". "No, we can't do that as then no one would know we sold it". "But you can't sell them". Ffs.

Fast forward to the magical world of consumer electronics. I bought a TV and went down to the loading bay to pick it up. The box had obviously been opened and dropped hard more than once. I refused it. It took over an hour to rescind the sale, only achieving this when I promised to ring Plod because they were trying to sell me a couple of bricks in a TV box. That enraged the jobsworth so much he opened it to find the screen damaged beyond repair.

Also one of their home delivery vans smacked my HGV in Reading. Drove off, but the dash cam caught it and they had to pay for a respray. Twats.

The administration team at dc school are awful, genuinely rude and unprofessional. The irony is that the head is hot on good behaviour from the children but not from his Admin team. Ironically it's an 'outstanding' secondary! The receptionists are good when the teachers are around but as soon as they're gone, they talk to the pupils & parents like shit. Not much you can do without witnesses.

I popped into the Drs to make an appointment for a smear test, I'd had the reminder letter and it happened to coincide with the annual campaign, list of posters on display etc etc. The conversation went.,,

"Can I make an appointment for a smear test please?"

"No. We haven't got any"

"What, ever?"

It's a good job I'm old enough to stand my ground and know that it's a necessary evil, someone younger and perhaps afraid of having the smear might have just walked out and not bothered.

I've got a good one. By far the worst I've had. Rural pub in the peak district. Bar food area and posher restaurant area. It was quiet, mostly the owner/barmans cronies at the bar and a few others. We sat in the bar area and ordered fish and chips. An hour later no sign of anything coming. Owner sent a 10 year old boy out of the kitchen to apologise that the fryer was broken. About 30 mins later soggy lukewarm food arrived. We're thinking there's no way we are paying for this. Plucking up the courage to complain. Meanwhile a well to do elderly couple emerge from the restaurant area to pay. Owner asks how the food is. Reply is " mine was lovely, the wife's lamb was a little tough " perfectly polite. Owner puffs himself up, and to our horror shouts " well you know what you can do, take yourself and your wife and fuck off" . Couple flee. Owner spends the next 15 minutes laughing with cronies about how the couple will be upset all night. As I suspect they were. We paid our bill in silence and walked out. Have never forgotten it.

LER83 I'd say that receptionist needs complaining about. She shouldn't be talking medical stuff like that. What if someone listened to her advice and ended up ill?

Virgin Media when we moved house

Kept moving the installation date endlessly

British Gas.

Trying to get the gas reconnected on a house we just bought; it had been empty for years so the gas was literally disconnected, capped off, not just turn a tap on type of case.

I could NOT make them understand this at all that it wasn’t just a change of homeowner at the property, one of their friendly gas chaps needed to physically come out and uncap and recommission it.

They kept putting me on hold to talk to someone else then accidentally cutting me off.

Went with another provider in the end.

We cancelled and went with BT I remember feeling so so annoyed at Virgin who didn’t care at all that we couldn’t trust them when they said a new date

North Somerset Council, tried to say we hadn't paid our council tax took us to court but then they didn't turn up. When we queried it they told DH that we were not in arrears, the next month we got the court summons, this went on for around 6 months before it was finally sorted