What are the worst big businesses? Name and shame!

[Memba]

40 minutes on hold to Virgin Media while they try to book an engineer to replace a TiVo box that went up in smoke (literally!) 2 weeks ago. Multiple calls to unhlepful staff in the meantime. Honestly, it would be easier to get a GP appointment...

Also GiffGaff. Tried to swap from EE. Nightmare. Massive buyers regret. You defintely get what you pay for.

But in the interest of fairness... First Direct and Octopus Energy are very much on my good list 😀

SCS.
Firstly when you go to look at the sofas they won't leave you alone,the delivery is delayed by months and when it turns up it either won't fit through the door or the recliners are broken or it's the wrong colour or the wrong sofa.
If you do manage to get the correct sofa it will look saggy within 4 weeks because they are so poorly made.

I've just gone through the process with them, there's a Facebook group full of people having issues and I wish I'd found it before I ordered.

Shops, big and small, have been encouraging shoppers to buy crap they don't need ever since shops came into existence. It's called marketing, cross selling, etc.

You're making the mistake of thinking only of the size of the business. One Amazon is doing the same thing that thousands of small shops used to do.

Yodel are absolutely shit in my area
No attempt to deliver when I've been in all day then an email saying we attempted delivery but no one at property or a photo of somewhere I don't recognise.
Waiting for them to collect a return right now.
However Evri are brilliant and the courier himself is reliable.
Definitely area dependant

Sadly we've recently had the same experience with a couple of G Plan sofas. We just wanted to replace our old/existing G Plan sofas with new ones as the old ones were over 20 years old and finally starting to show signs of wear. Otherwise we'd been delighted with the quality etc.

The new ones are horrendous. Very poor quality, one of the recliner mechanisms was broken, another was noisy/creaky, there were snags in the material, and on one, the upholstery hadn't been stretched over properly and was already saggy. When we contacted them to complain, they just sent out a random sub-contractor to have a look and he just told us they were fine and fed back to G Plan that there was nothing wrong with them, other than replacing a motor in the broken one and left that one noisy/creaky too!

Their quality of both service and build has massively deteriorated. Wish we hadn't bothered now and just bought cheap instead.

Bad:
Scottish Power
BMW Swindon Garage
John Lewis Southampton Also John Lewis in general has massively missed the mark this Christmas.

Good:
Sky Broadband
Octopus Energy

It's down to the delivery person really. We've got a really good Evri delivery guy - same guy every day, always around the same time, with his ancient estate car full to the roof of parcels. Lovely guy too, very friendly and polite.

Unfortunately, our regular Royal Mail guy is a right miserable, grumpy and unhelpful guy, that's when he bothers coming. Many times we've had a "while you were out" card left when he's not even rung the door bell and we've been in. I once caught him doing it and chased him down the drive to ask for the parcel and he was forced to admit he didn't have it in his van as he "assumed" we'd be out at work so he left it at the depot!

It's really down to the person, not the company.

Zurich insurance
Despite paying house insurance to them for over 20 years when we needed to claim they offered a pittance.
Feckers.

Bad: OVO Energy and Churchill Insurance

Good: Octopus Energy

BT. Just typing that makes my blood pressure rise. My heart sinks any time I have to deal with them.

UKPN. We're on the PSR and any time we have an issue with the power supply, they let us know immediately what has happened and continue to update until power is restored.

Bad Churchill. At least when I cancelled they waived the cancellation charge due to amount of rants I had.
Sky. DH has monthly phone calls to discuss the issues they promised to sort out last month.
HMRC.
Good.
Hastings direct (well compared to Churchill)
First direct
Amex.

Evri ok in our area. But never had a problem so never had to get in contact with someone.
Amazon are ok once you get through the digital chat.

I left Virgin Media after months of back and forth with them refusing to send an engineer because supposedly as long as my internet works for a few minutes a day, it's fine. Couldn't do my job but sure, fine. Absolutely awful company.

To be fair I have no issues with delivery firms in my area, evri, DPD, Royal mail, amazon etc are all good.

The exception seems to be yodel which I rarely seem to be on the receiving end of but our community WhatsApp is full of people trying to find where their parcels have been delivered to.

Virgin Media currently blaming Yodel for my lack of a box. But took an hour and 20 minutes on the phone to get there!

@SpongeBobSquarePantaloons who did you switch to? nd was it a massive hassle?

Isn’t that funny. I find GiffGaff utterly useless. Ongoing issues with them and you can speak directly to someone.

i think companies are generally good until something goes wrong and then all hell seems to break loose.

I second Scottish Power, a nightmare to deal with.

We had an almost identical situation with a faulty tumble dryer from AO (it was sent to us missing a vital part which meant it flooded the room every time it was used). Despite reporting it the same day it was installed, we were told it wasn't their problem!

The call handler was vile, really condescending and unpleasant. It took multiple calls and references to consumer law to get any kind of resolution. I will never, ever grace their website again. Lesson well and truly learned!

Oh I love giffgaff but I’ve been with them for 11 years so not got recent experience of switching. I switched from EE who tried to persuade me to stay even though I told them the reason was that I had no signal in my house with them…

I agree with Boots and most delivery companies being awful. A gift I ordered from Boots recently came damaged and instead of just refunding or replacing like any other company, they offered I could exchange it in store (defeating the purpose of ordering online) or send it back to them (so they could send the defective one to some other poor sod).

I recently found out you can download the Royal Mail app to opt out of allowing the postie to leave stuff in a non-designated safe place (even though it feels like that should be the default!) but haven’t found an option for that with other carriers so have to continue to put up with stuff being nicked from the doorstep that I told them to deliver a different day.

west elm. genuinely amazingly awful

i saw their reviews weren't great but thought how bad can it be? delivered something broken and not at all as described then took 8 weeks to sort it out. you can't email, or webchat, you have to phone and they are just awful. and very expensive.

Nestle, because of the formula milk scandal.

Hillarys Blinds, treat their staff like shit, toxic work culture, don't pay contractors without legal threats.

Anne Louise boutique. Google their trust pilot reviews.

boohoo denied me a claim when I had an entire package show up with a huge hole in it and missing items

They didn’t even look at my evidence or my photos all my videos before deciding that they were in the right and I lost about £50

Vinted also. I got scammed and they did nothing.

Agree re Virgin Media. Far and away the worst I have ever had to deal with, I can feel my BP rising just thinking about it!
Boots online is woeful - why can’t they just sort their fucking awful website!

Curry’s. Never again will they get a penny from me
awful. Awful company to deal with and their ‘helpline’ is horrendous

Vodafone
I bought a phone off them and it was faulty-took forever to sort it out the staff where rude and useless

(I know they are not around anymore) Carphone warehouse
I bought a phone from them-payg-they started to bill me as if I'd taken out a contract
I refused to pay as I was topping up weekly and they tried to take me to court,claiming I'd signed up to a contract (I hadn't signed a thing)
I held my nerve and they went bust just before we where due to go

Chips and sprinkles on notonthehighstreet
I ordered a crochet set and it didn't appear
I got in touch and they called me a scammer and a liar-i wanted a freebie apparently
I had to get in touch with notonthehighstreet and they got me a refund within the hour

Evri-i luffs our evri guy
He knows where to put my parcels if I'm not in and he's just amazing

Yodel-not so much
If they deliver,it's anyone's guess which house they deliver to

Shell garage (I'm going back more than a few years)
We had one at the end of my parents street
I'd gone in with my wages one day (a full £5!) and the miserable bitch behind the counter took it off me and claimed it was a fake
I never got it back,she kept it
What she didn't know (nor care) is the fact I was going to school for 6 hours a day and babysitting the rest of the time to earn money for luxuries like food,clothes and san-pro as my abusive mother refused to pay for stuff like that as soon as I was old enough to babysit/work for cash
I'd worked 16 hours for that £5 which would have been loose change to her

I've never forgiven her for that

If the note was a fake, then it was a fake. Doesn't matter how long it took you to earn it. Perhaps your ire should be directed at your boss who gave it to you!

I agree that John Lewis (Southampton and online) have shocking customer service. They used to be great but no longer.

I've been lucky as always had excellent customer service from Virgin and Miele (the latter get a bad press on MN). DPD, UPS and DHL great here both for UK and international parcel delivery.

Can't cope with Evri! Unreliable and the local delivery guy is rude!

Flannels- awful! Sent items back in original packaging - they claimed only to have received one item. Sent proof (photographs of the box with contents, weight on scales, and postage label) but it still took a month and the threat of a credit card charge back (which is not good for the business) to get them to refund the whole (returned) order as 'a gesture of goodwill'!!!!!!!!! Never will I use them, HOF or any other businesses connected to them.