Poll on worst customer service you get from any large company you have to deal with on a regular basis?

[A580Hojas]

My nomination is Vodafone. By miles.

I rang them earlier, got the "we're all busy, do you want to book a call back?" option. So I booked it. They have now called back and I have now been waiting 35 minutes listening to their music interspersed by "sorry for the delay, your call is top priority and will be answered next" every 60 seconds.

In the time I've been holding I've been for a wee, husband has cooked the pasta to go with the bolognese, served it all up, mine's going cold while I wait for Vodafone to give me a few moments of customer service.

How crappy can a telecoms company actually be in 2022? I can only assume there is one person taking calls for Vodafone tonight.

Vodafone we're just awful, but that was some time ago.
Terrible from Aga too. We bought a range cooker from them and it was an absolute farce.

Oh and when I was on hold to cancel the automated line basically said “don’t leave us, we will give you…. Four….pounds… twenty…. Off your bill” I wet myself laughing for 45 minutes on hold every time that robotic voice kicked in.

Virgin and British Gas. Both lie as easily as they breathe and don't give a shit about delivering any service once you've signed up.

Honourable mention for Better who manage all the leisure centres near me. The website has no useful info and when you finally find the number they don't answer. They can't even be bothered to respond to live chat apart from asking if it's on the website and cutting you off when you ask them to have a look.

Oh Openreach. Tried to get a telephone line for phone and broadband to a remote location. They installed a telegraph pole, connected it to a wall socket, but never connected the line. This went on for months when each week an engineer came out, looked at the pole and scratched his head, told me they had set up the number at the wrong exchange box (?) and that I needed to phone the office (in India, who were lovely, but didn't understand the geography). I still don't have broadband :-/

British Gas. Like a PP I CBA to go into it all, but I am regularly No.47 in the phone queue, they have a recorded message saying they are experiencing a high volume of calls, blah blah blah.
Every amendment takes '5 working days' for no apparent reason.
I had a call with them last week where the background (WFH) noise sounded like the TV and small children.
Currently on the 2nd time of '5 working days' waiting for the smallest thing to be done.

Lloyds pharmacy. It took them FIVE months to deliver my daughters life changing medical device and associated medication. Trying to get a repeat prescription out of them is like getting blood out of a stone,

Shell Energy. I’m not a customer, have never been a customer and had never contacted them. For some reason they have decided I owe them money and it’s up to me to prove I don’t. It took hours of my time to sort out and they sent me the princely sum of 30 quid for the inconvenience.

So glad that other people have mentioned British Gas Homecare.

I ended up flouncing the other day and cancelling my cover, which I’d had absolutely no intention of doing when I tried to first contact them with a simple query. No shiny shits were given (five days later when I finally got a response).

Claire's accessories just look at their reviews it is insane
as is Hermes
how are they getting away with it?

Really everywhere has piss poor service rn. The only one that's been decent ime is Argos. Which amazed me, as they used to be shit.

Bulb.

Fucking dreadful.

@Redlorryyellowduck we had a fab experience with Emma. The mattress was a load of shite but the customer service was fab!

If it counts as a company, my local NHS trust. I have been trying to get through to them for a week straight to cancel/change an appointment I can't make (due to another, more urgent appointment at another hospital). Nobody, not the department, not the switchboard, nobody at all is answering the phone. This is not a new problem, it's been like this for years. Switchboard did answer once and said they would put me through but doubted anyone would answer.... they were right.
If I can't rearrange, I will be DNA'd and discharged, so I've now emailed PALs and asked them to contact the relevant people and inform them. Hope it works.
Why, in 2022, they can't have an email address for people to send messages to, I don't know.

Virgin Media. Absolute disgrace of a company and their internet (in my street) is appalling. I lost 11 working hours throughout August (I WFH) as the internet kept going down and they did not give a shit.

I voted with my feet and left. Internet hasn't dropped once with the new provider.

BT

How on earth can we be this many posts in with nobody mentioning Ryanair??? Or is it just too obvious so goes without saying?

I agree with a lot of these. Vodafone, 3, Talk Talk, British Gas, E-on. All are absolutely fucking useless and I've had complaints with them all.

I'm so fucking sick of customer service advisors just making up fucking answers. I work in a call centre and if I don't know I find out. If I'm wrong and you raise a complaint you get £25 per incorrect thing that has went wrong. Can I fuck get anything out of the above companies though even though collectively they have probably wasted over 100 hours of my life.

I left Virgin because they were crap, got Sky, equally crap. Now I have Talktalk and so far so good.

Curry's are the worst company I have ever dealt with, during lockdown I ordered Samsung ear buds & a smartwatch for myself costing nearly £500, paid for premium delivery & they never turned up. I was on the phone for 5 days solid getting passed around, being told that my goods had been despatched & that was the end of their responsibility. They made me wait 21 days while they "investigated" before they finally sent me replacement goods, no apology or refund for the premium delivery. I bought a new Samsung tablet direct from Samsung, it was delivered 14 hours after ordering, brilliant service.

Virgin PayPal and Hermes have all irritated me.
Amex however is great.

Hemnes delivery's by a mile

Can I add ‘Milk N More’ to the mix? They regularly fail to deliver our milk (it tends to happen for 1-2 weeks at a time so I presume it’s when our regular milkman is on hols / isolating), but there is no means to contact your milkman directly so you a forced to speak with customer services via a shitty little chat box. They apparently don’t have the power to contact your milkman directly either! They waste your time not responding to you on the chat and then fail to resolve the issue. All I want is a frigging bottle of milk!!!

Santander. I can’t control my rage enough to explain why 😂

Robert Dyas and Sainsbury's.

Robert Dyas left us with a broken pile of garden furniture, not fit for purpose and only fit for firewood, having happily pocketed hundreds of pounds of our hard-earned money. I think they are owned by Theo Paphitis of Dragon's Den fame.

Sainsbury's were completely heartless when I was trying to get a vulnerable, shielding and deserving family onto their priority list for shopping deliveries. Luckily another supermarket wasn't.

Nationwide, specifically their mortgage department.

Utterly shocked at how poor they have become.