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.

Virgin Media will never use them again, wrong bills, wrong address, almost impossible to sort out problems via the call centre etc etc (this was pre-covid)

@SnoopyLights A few years ago a newborn puppy was stolen from my mum while she was paying for their health checks at vets4pets. Someone just got up from their seat, took the puppy from the box and walked out.
They absolutely refused to give any information on the customer who took it and refused to get involved. They also refused the cctv footage when the police asked for it as their customer took priority as they were 'valued'. They knew exactly who took that newborn puppy and were happy to let it die (there's no way it would have survived).

It really doesn't surprise me that you're dealing with shitty service from them. As long as they have their money they don't give a crap about your pets.

AA, took almost two hours to get them to answer a call after I had been in an accident! Then a further 3.5 hours to recover my vehicle even though the company doing the recovery is 5 minutes away from the scene of the accident.
Then promised me a call back in the afternoon when I got home to take more details, no call.
Called them back next morning, 3 more hours on the phone before they answered it. Shocking service.
Much worse than all the usual suspects, SSE, Virgin Media, British Gas etc all of whom I deal with on a regular basis with vulnerable clients.

Barclays - the ONLY thing they excel at is as irritants in EVERY respect.
British Airways - they've been going downhill for years, but Covid has truly done it for them.
See Tickets - shower of absolute arseholes, still refusing to take calls.

Fucking Shell Energy, shower of incompetent cunts. We were so exhausted after 2 years of trying to pay them for a tiny bill from when we first bought our house (& being initially turned down for a remortgage 2 years later due to a non existent massive debt) that we didnt even have the energy to carry on with the complaints procedure. Enact conveyancing (employed by Santander when we finally got our remortgage sorted) come a close second. The only way to get them to actually act is to post an arsey Trust Pilot review which they clearly pay people to monitor because they are so shit

Bought a new boiler and went for a Worcester as everyone says they are the best. It broke within 2 months. It was a massive cold snap here and one night got down to -9 (highly unusual even where I live). Took them a week to get someone to fix it and customer service were completely not bothered, no apologetic and not invested in fixing a situation which should never have come up. Had to call them 4 times to get it resolved. I have a new house. Need a new boiler. Would not touch Worcester with a barge pole (although to be fair the people who came out and did the actual work were lovely, it was the call centre who were crap).

I came on here to say Vodafone. I was in tears the last time I had to get them to do anything when I moved house a couple of years ago. It’s looking like I might be moving again this year, and one of the first things in my mind was how stressful it would be to deal with them again. Absolutely awful.

Virgin Media. They had no interest in one of their staff harassing me I complained three times (turning up at my home last time was very late at night, leaving me horrible explicit notes) pretend to be interested once police were involved sending flowers and apology letter which made me angrier

British Telecom Charing me for two households, cancelling the fitting of phone line in my new home as I had one in my old home In the end after many emails they eventually paid the costs of all the calls I had to make to them (about £50)

And American Airlines. Nearly every flight has been re routed so it’s a guess where you might end up and the rudest staff imaginable really at odds with usual customer service in the US

Talktalk - terrible - had problems with a crossed line, had it every time there was a new tenant in my flat and another in my building. I contacted them to tell them the issue, numerous times, and each time they said they'd make a note of it. One day, the phone line was dead, no internet, they'd disconnected it and then made me pay for cancelling the contract. I spent hours and hours sorting it out. and they only reduced the fine to 50% so still had to pay around £70.

On the other hand Eon Next - I had to speak to them recently - perfect customer service! They were so helpful and polite. it made such a difference!

Asda online groceries. Story too long and boring to go into but their failure to deliver cost me more money, totally inconvenienced me and they had the cheek to say they had no record of my order at all after delivering part of it 5 hours late. The other part just never came at all could't get to speak to anyone for days and it took several attempts to actually get a refund for the non-delivered part of the order.
They clearly had no communication between the driver, the depot and telephone services part of the company, I think they deliberately put barriers between them and their customers.They just are not interested
and their apologies are less convincing than Boris! I am never shopping with them again.

Wizz air - they seem to pride themselves on it

Sainsbury’s banking - credit cards. Kept saying I’d missed payments which they’d charge me for. I wanted to dispute this as always paid on time. Their Internet banking said I needed to phone as there was an issue. The phone line kept telling me to use internet banking and would then cut me off after many mins of listening to messages about how busy they were.
Eventually I got a final warning telling me to pay £19 immediately. Got through on their debt line after 32 minutes. Paid the bill off in full the next month and went to phone them to close my account. Couldn’t get through to anyone that could close it. However the automated service told me I was £19 in credit. Twats.

EE. We were moving house and my broadband was off, and I was about to run out of data on my phone. I just needed to buy a bit of data for a few days until my broadband was back up and running but the website kept throwing up an error, after hours and hours on the phone with various useless agents who couldn’t seem to understand what I was asking, I went into an EE shop in person and ended up sorting it in about 5 minutes there!

Honourable mentions for British Gas, Asda Groceries and HSBC!

EE, the people answering the phone appear to have just got out of bed (suspect they have as all wfh). Zero accountability.

Interesting that most are phones or utilities. Both make loads of money.

Our current issue is with Everest. We had a new door and window fitted to replace an old wooden pair.
They've somehow managed to miss a whole piece off the bottom of the door - in the factory and then not noticed by the fitters.
So in this cold weather we have a door you can put your hand between that and the frame. Rain is constantly filling the frame and it's letting in tons of smoke from next door's fire plus a huge draft.
Absolutely impossible to get hold of customer services (took them all of 5 mins to ring us for the payment though).

Also had recent dreadful experiences with Vodafone. Wouldn't touch them again with a barge pole.

Virgin Media. I don’t know what’s happened to them, they used to be so good. Now dealing with them is an ordeal.

Currys! A couple of years ago I ordered DH a games console (PS4 when it was new) which cost £500 and never arrived despite them taking the money. It took 4 days of being on hold to get through to them only to find they had no stock and werent getting any but it would take 10days for a refund for an item they had no intention of sending me!

Fast forward to the PS5. Ordered one on release day from Very. Paid upfront.
Given a delivery date.
It never arrived.
Given a different delivery date.
It never arrived.
Turns out they had taken 'pre orders' but didnt tell customers but still took the money for it. They also didnt know if/when they would get stock and refused to refund as it was a pre-ordered item which had been 'secured' for delivery?!
And of course they use Yodel as a carrier.
They attempted delivery 3 times, except they didnt as I have a ring doorbell.
In the end i went to their distribution centre to get my parcel only to find it marked as damaged and was being returned to Very as it was water damaged!
They had left it in the back of a flooded lorry for 4 days.
Somehow it worked still but it was the worst 2 months of phonecalls back and forth to Very.

Im never buying a games console ever again.

Virgin media
Scottish power
Leeds Homes
Yodel

British Gas blood pressure raising telephone calls if you are lucky (or unlucky!) enough to get through and then they are fuck all help, over an hour down out of your day to be told no you can't have the contract you signed up for in March 2021 because of covid?!

BA.

They just literally ignore complaints and don’t give customers any realistic mechanism for you to contact them other than through their crappy website forms.

Total bellends.

I voted YABU because I have found every company I have to deal with since Covid have been shit; both public sector and private sector. I currently have problems with 16 different organisations.
Clearly wfh is not working.

Wisemove. The couriers are awful and often steal, break or lose items.
Wisemove say it’s not their responsibility.

Oof I forgot the mess I had with Argos last year. I bought 3 items online for delivery, paid for and all booked and confirmed. Also had to organise someone to install one of the items so booked a guy and paid him a deposit. Nice.

Evening before they were due to be delivered I get an email saying one of my items is out of stock so.. sorry. Wasn't out of stock when I placed my order and paid for it!! It was also the item that needed installing.

Phoned Argos. Asked why they'd said the item was in stock, taken my payment (a week earlier), and confirmed my delivery slot if it was actually out of stock? He said oh it was in stock when you ordered it but we've sold them all now. Erm.. you've sold MY item that I paid for already? Yes.

I may have gone slightly bonkers, asked him how do they get away with selling items someone else has already paid for, and cancelled my entire order (which was worth a bit because I was redoing the whole kitchen!).

Never using Argos ever again. Never heard anything so batshit in my entire life as a company being able to sell an item someone else has already paid for and has confirmation of delivery of said item.

Asda are shocking. Deliver only half my order twice but keep all the money.

BT they shouldn't be allowed to trade same with Scottish Power.

Currys are useless. DH won a free tv with them and had to fight for months to get it. Then last year we went through 3 fridge/freezers with them as they all lasted a few weeks and broke. No compensation for loss of food.

Think that's all on my list. They all make my blood boil.