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.

As soon as I read the title, Vodafone came to mind. I don't mind a wait for my call to be answered, but I do expect it to be answered by someone who is not utterly incompetent and can understand what I am saying. Never going near them again.

Ticketmaster. Spent literally thousands on some tickets and can't get to speak to/ email anyone. Just fob me off with automated replies!

Sports Direct and Ryanair.
In fact, I’ve given up trying to contact Sports Direct customer services. I just go straight to Trustpilot and leave them a shit review, which is more likely to get a response than actually contacting them!

I have seen a number of people saying how bad HMRC are and to some extent I agree as I was on the phone for 45 minutes waiting to speak to someone who when she answered couldn’t help so I was put back on hold for another 30 minutes to speak to a senior manager who was fantastic. He went through everything and it ended up with me never having to fill in a tax return again (my current income is too low).

Our Hermes deliver is very good but I know others have problems.

All of them since they've been "working" from home!

BT tell you a different lie every day. Literally. Actually made shit up about roadworks in our road. Um, funnily enough I can actually see that there are no roadworks in this road. Only got their arses in gear when a local MP intervened.

Vodafone. Gave me a software update, fucked my wifi and then said it was my problem to fix. My husband cancelled the account and six months later got a letter saying he owed six months of unpaid bills. Well yes, that would be because you can’t follow a simple instruction and cancel an account.

The AA. Their mechanic misdiagnosed my car, didn’t tell the garage I was arriving, didn’t tell me I couldn’t keep the loan car and then when I complained about the absolute circus of incompetence they dismissed my complaint and said I should have taken my car to a garage. I was going to but on their idiot mechanic’s advice I cancelled it! As soon as my insurance is up for renewal I think I’ll be going elsewhere.

Santander. Specifically their mortgage dept. Lying useless shites they were. Talk talk, also very shit. Cancelled my internet home move with no explanation and then made me call up to re place it, even though they're an internet company. Still waiting for the complaints dept to ring me. Shell energy, also rubbish.

If I never had to speak to a call centre again I'd be happy. Why do they insist on making you sit in a bloody queue. Most things could be done online, then people could answer the calls of customers who actually want to speak to them!

Our Samsung fridge had a glass shelf that cracked. It was still under warranty. They refused to fix it because they said we must have done something no cause the crack.

We had not. It was a shelf underneath another with little clearance. Things like yogurt and other low containers lived there. Nothing even remotely heavy.

I was very, very annoyed and thankfully after a few rather difficult calls, they decided I was too much trouble and fixed it.

Virgin...been trying to cancel to change provider for internet only....impossible as contract now expired but is in name of a friend who stayed here years ago....now a registered missing person...we dont have the passwords etc...even gave them police report numbers etc...now they wont even talk to us as have been told that we '....have exceeded account access limit...'...

Calor gas
My mother died over a year ago and we informed them straight away. There are now tenants in the property, the tenants have had a tank refill and are registered with calor as now being responsible for the tank.
Despite this , every month they have sent bills for tank rental to my mother.
They ignore emails
Last time I called I was 42 in queue and on hold for over an hour. I explained how frustrating it was and also upsetting to keep getting bills addressed to my mother. Was told she absolutely understood, could t understand why this was happening as account showed all the correct new info. Duly received credit note cancelling previous bill, again addressed to my mother!
Great though, issue sorted
Guess what arrived this week, bill for this months rental
Tried to call, was number 92 in queue, so ripped it up and binned it and asked tenant to just write not known at this address and repost if more arrive.
Absolutely appalling customer service

My top 4 (1 being the shittest):

1. British Gas - customer services guy spent ten minutes sucking in his breath really annoyingly and said he hadn't a clue about my gas bill query nor where to take it. I moved to Octopus.

1. BT - the guy kept insisting he speak to Dr Spinning the billholder, and I kept saying well that's me, I'm the billholder; and then I twigged he clearly thought he needed to speak to a male voice. He did say sorry, but it seems an odd mistake to make in the 21st centory.

1. Argos - customer services in the shop initially wouldn't take the tech item back that didn't work on the grounds that 'they just don't work properly these days.' We received a refund at a later point.

1. JOHN FUCKING LEWIS!! In a class of its own. Rude, vile, smug, unhelpful, apparently acting outside of consumer law and generally awful. We received a refund and a goodwill gesture via the CEO's office at a later point.

Re Vodafone, had shocking customer service when trying to upgrade my phone which culminated in him telling me that yes I should just switch providers.
Went into local shop as last ditch attempt, sales guy was just lovely, negotiated me a better deal than any I could find online and even saved money on my daughters existing contract. Absolutely five star.

Bloody awful liars at Scottish Power.

If I moved house and they were the providers, I’d be changing them before my first kettle had boiled.

Hermes. I've started my own thread about them in the past. Absolute shambles with a nonexistent customer service. I get this feeling of dread whenever I see they're the courier for something I ordered.

Matalan. Bought baby DS a thick woolly jumper recently and it unravelled from the pocket within an hour of him wearing it. I took a pic and emailed CS. Was told they'd get in touch and I've heard nothing since. Exactly the same thing happened to my knitted cardy purchased from New Look. Their CS was excellent with prompt friendly replies via email and I had a refund the same day. Same scenario but entirely different experiences.

Virgin media. Our Internet is always down and it's so frustrating when WFH. VM promised an engineer to come and sort it then cancelled last minute as it was a 'problem in the area'. It wasn't. We have since threatened to withhold payment as we receive little to no Internet. They have finally made an appointment to send someone.

Barclays

Virgin media.

Has pushed me to the limit many times, utterly crap service and they know it.

@Popkids

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.

Yes to Better!!

Was told I had to go down to the venue for my concert tickets. Website said it was open at 9.30am, sign on the door said 9.30am. Me and another woman were there, I’d nipped out of work and we could see people. We banged in the door and they ignored us. Called reception, ignored us. Finally at 10am they let us in and pretended not to have seen or heard us.

I then lost a £600 bracelet at the venue, was told I had to fill a form in with lost property. Emailed a dozen pictures of me with the bracelet. They’re still processing my lost property claim - from November

I was also considering taking out British Gas Homecare cover. So pleased I didn’t!

I know they are a government agency, but surely it has to be the DVLA, using the WFH excuse for the most dreadful customer service? I have heard of so many unreasonable delays and them being uncontactable, including it taking them up to 10 months to issue Provisional Driving Licences. Why is it ok that people can't even begin to learn to drive because of this?

BT in conjunction with Openreach. Horrendous experience.

I clicked on this just knowing Vodafone would be mentioned first.

Their customer service is beyond abysmal. I cannot be bothered to type out what happened as thinking about still makes me so angry. But suffice to say I'd rather live with no means to communicate with anyone for the rest of my life, rather than buy one of their products again

Another vote for the bureaucratic nightmare that is DVLA. It is literally impossible to contact them and speak to a human being. They are the epitome of a sclerotic public sector bureaucracy which doesn’t give a fuck about its customers because it knows they have nowhere else to go. Any business which showed this attitude to its customers would go bust in weeks.

At the opposite end of the scale, Sky’s customer service is outstanding. I get my broadband & TV from them and I literally cannot fault them.

Hermes. Absolute shower of shite and every bloody company seems to use them as couriers. They get such bad reviews j can’t understand why companies don’t ditch them and use someone that actually fucking delivers / collects stuff when they’re meant to. Every single time I try to arrange a courier collection they don’t turn up.

Sports Direct. They (well actually Hermes!) delivered half an item of sports equipment which is currently useless as the second half of the delivery has been outstanding for weeks. Apparently it remains ‘with the courier’ and they’ve ‘escalated it’ which has done bugger all. I said at this point I just want a refund and they can take the bloody thing back. They’re now ignoring me

Odeon
We had Limitless cards which we decided to cancel when our local cinema reopened in July and monthly payments resumed (being CEV I didn’t feel that going to the cinema was a good idea). It took them until October to cancel our memberships and obviously in the meantime they continued to take the monthly fee.

They did however manage to send emails requesting for our details, despite them being given the required information several times, and also emailed three times to enquire why we wanted to cancel.

At the end of October we were told that we would be refunded for payments taken since our initial cancellation request in July but it would take 3 weeks to process this.

10 weeks and several more emails to them later, we’ve still not been refunded.

BT
Pointless failure of a company. Failed to get our address right, ‘yeah, no, got it, definitely 3 Shite Road, no, not Flat 3 Shite Street.’
Cue seven months of them failing to provide us with internet.

Two hours to get through to them every time, then got hung up on, two seconds in. Why don’t they just fuck off? Why don’t they just accept that they’re incapable of providing the entire point of their shitty business and just fuck off.