Are there any stores or companies you refuse to shop from or deal with?

[User1055]

As the thread title says - I have just decided to shop anywhere except a major high street electrical / computer company from now onwards after a couple of poor customer service issues. I shopped there from convenience, but I'm fed up with them now.
This got me thinking. I avoid any MLM, even though I really like some products I was given as a gift, and stores with poor ethics regarding production, worker treatment, etc.
Do you have any you actively avoid?

And the reason I got a reprimand is because they are only insured for incidents in public spaces. If that parent or child were injured or if there was a theft they are uninsured and it would have been my problem to deal with. At that point a student on £2.50 an hour.

Nestle

@Malin52 I worked in a number of retail outlets as a student and the manager always had discretion in such matters. My son was clearly distressed when we returned and there was not even an acknowledgement of this fact (although they were happy to take payment for the shoes!).

@DameFanny I may well do. They've been advertising heavily on Facebook and, whilst I wouldn't comment publicly, it does rankle every time they advertise how family friendly they are!

I'm sorry that was your experience but most shops have tiny toilets only permitted for staff use

This.

Homeserve. they were asshats about cancelling the contract when my mother died...wouldn't speak to anybody until they had sight of a death certificate and were very snotty about it...but fair enough, we were trying to cancel the contract. When my husband died and i was phoning around arranging to transfer direct debit payments from his account to mine and so on, EVERYBODY was really kind and helpful....all needed to see a death certificate, but all said the same thing...either DON'T pay for loads of them, we promise to keep the service going until we hear from you or they took new details over the phone and made the transfer. Credit cards immediately suspended the account, said don't worry about arrears or non payment, we know probate takes time......all except Homeserve who once again wouldn't talk to me until they had seen death cert and once again were snotty as hell. All I wanted to do was to continue the cover but they were so horrible I cancelled it instead.

And Cadburys for tasting shite

I boycott (as in passionately advocate others avoid as well)
Barclays Bank
The Science Museum
Cheap supermarket meat
The Daily Mail
I won’t shop in:
Primark
Shien
River Island
But I see that there are many high street clothes shops that have just as crap supply chain and sustainability as them so can’t really justify...

Lush for the overpowering smell, rip off prices and their politics.
The Body Shop for that tweet
Primark for the shocking quality

@igelkott2021

Our local village loves to bang on about shopping local, please shop independent etc and of course, they were all outraged when a large coffee chain established a site

I am not at all convinced by the "shop independent" thing. I find the chains are more accountable and they still offer local jobs.

yes i agree. My local butchers is dire and my local waitrose is staffed by local people.

Clarks for children’s shoes, since they refused to sell me “boys” shoes that my 2 year old DD had chosen. She’s nearly 10, her brother is 13, that’s a lot of school shoes that have come from elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I have size 9 feet and am limited on where I can buy shies for myself. Clark’s are one of the few places that do 9s for women.

@GoodbyePorpoiseSpit what are the reasons for the Science Museum, please? A poor personal experience or something corporate?

The Body Shop.

Which is a shame as I used to love them. But their JKR stunt means I will never give them any money any again.

@BikeRunSki

Clarks for children’s shoes, since they refused to sell me “boys” shoes that my 2 year old DD had chosen. She’s nearly 10, her brother is 13, that’s a lot of school shoes that have come from elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I have size 9 feet and am limited on where I can buy shies for myself. Clark’s are one of the few places that do 9s for women.

You're jeffing kidding @BikeRunSki - that is INSANE!! I still remember an argument I got into on social media years ago on behalf of a friend who's posted about this issue...someone was blathering on about how there were deffo major well-known differences between the shape of toddler feet depending on whether they were boys or girls and it was the tipping point in me not using FB anymore 😁

I don't use our local Co op because there is only ever one till open whlst four members of staff stand chatting and person on the till joins in periodically. Find it incredibly rude and the queues are awful. I, then don't tend to use other Co ops in case they are the same.
Haven't used Tesco since the horsemeat in burgers episode and probably won't again.
Local pharmacy after one of the dispensing people told the GF of a bloke my sister had slept with that she'd got the morning after pill. Don't condone what sister did either but the lack of confidentiality was huge for me. Also don't like that they won't dispense between 11 and 2 so that pharmacist can choose the 30 minutes when she goes for lunch. Go to the one in the next village instead.

[quote Letsgetquizzy]@Malin52 I worked in a number of retail outlets as a student and the manager always had discretion in such matters. My son was clearly distressed when we returned and there was not even an acknowledgement of this fact (although they were happy to take payment for the shoes!).

@DameFanny I may well do. They've been advertising heavily on Facebook and, whilst I wouldn't comment publicly, it does rankle every time they advertise how family friendly they are!

[/quote]
And it's therefore in their discretion to to say 'no' for the reasons I described above.
'Family friendly' does not encompass allowing members of the public into employee only areas because they are a family.

Thewiseoneincognito

MsHedgehog
*@Thewiseoneincognito So you’ve never needed help by a fitting room assistant? Someone who comes to the fitting room door and you then open the door for them to help you... The lack of logic 😂😂😂
🤣🤣 I wouldn’t be so trashy to open the door naked, also I don’t believe every male is a rapist or voyeur. 😉

Maybe not but I’d 100% assume any male who wants to work in a ladies changing room probably is a voyeur, pervert or rapist and I’m not sure many of the general public would disagree with me or think I was being unreasonable.

@BikeRunSki

Clarks for children’s shoes, since they refused to sell me “boys” shoes that my 2 year old DD had chosen. She’s nearly 10, her brother is 13, that’s a lot of school shoes that have come from elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I have size 9 feet and am limited on where I can buy shies for myself. Clark’s are one of the few places that do 9s for women.

a shop refused to sell you what you wanted??????? that is weird. I have got short wide feet and spent all my years in "boy's" shoes (60's and 70's), the grammar school i went to had official uniform shoes and I was excused from wearing them because they didn't make them in wide fittings.

oh and not asda because our local one os a filthy shambles

I refuse to use a local tesco because they are constantly doing "fun" fundraising and the jolly dickhead behind the counter told me to smile.
You have to run the gauntlet of shaking buckets and fancy dress there.
I don't mind the odd event, but they jump on every fucking bandwagon going and make you feeling shit for not joining in
The store is filthy and badly stocked because they put all of their energy into FUN! FUN AT ALL COSTS!
I'd hate to be their area manager

@Geamhradh

The Clinique counter in Nottingham John Lewis. Very nasty assistant who carried on dusting her shelves when my elderly mother was asking about reformation of a foundation. Clearly decided 70 year old wasn't worth her time. 70 year old thus spent £200 in Clinique at Debenhams.

I do hope she did a Julia Roberts and went back to show the dusting assistant the sales targets she had missed out on!

@peaceanddove would that be in Nottingham? They've been there years. But I do agree that it's not appropriate.

Victorian Plumbing. Truly horrific customer service - when you are finally able to reach them, which can take hours since they've actually removed any phone numbers to ensure they can't be contacted by phone. And when I say they're mind-blowingly unhelpful I'm being exceptionally kind. Never again!

VW/Audi Group.

They had a multi-million $ development programme that's only objectives were to mislead the emissions regulators and lie to their entire customer base.

I couldn't ever buy a product from them because how would I know which bits they are lying about and which bits are honest. Are their figures on braking efficiency true or false? What about the resilience of their fuel tanks in a crash? Honest or not? Who knows.

They were (and probably still are) systematically dishonest and I don't understand why the entire board of Directors isn't in jail.

Lush after their appalling police adverts
Body shop because they mocked a DV survivor
Elemis because they now test on animals
Local Tesco after a home delivery chap swore at me while delivering my shopping
Any shops or businesses owned by one particular local family

''Obviously it is very hard to prove the cause of food poisoning and they knew that. ''

but you don't know if it was the takeaway you boycotted either, food poisoning can take place days after you eat the product so people often mistaken what caused it and it can be impossible to pinpoint what caused it.