Complaining!

[Sister77]

Have just read the thread about the rude sainsburys check out man and wanted to ask what are people's best/worst outcomes when they've complained?
I've decided that I will not accept shoddy service, rude attitudes or bitchy/bullying behaviour towards me or anyone else.
My DH thinks I'm loopy and getting on my high horse for nothing but I don't think it's acceptable.
I don't complain then stew about it and argue with the person in my head like I'm back in that situation!
Sometimes my DC ask who talking to as they can see my lips moving!

I've had some brilliant customer service on ebay too, if that counts!

£250 For cock up and being lied to by bank

£10 for no orange creams in a tin of chocolates

£50 for issues with Internet banking

£200 food bill knocked off when sat on only table not protected by glass screens from freezing blast of front door of restaurant that was so cold we were sat in our coats (December in Scotland)

I had booked ages in advance as it was my 21st bday meal with parents and family

Pps I have never been impolite or shouted when complaining - maybe assertive but not implolite

We were out for a family meal for a birthday. Started off fine, then we waited an hour for the main course after the starter plates had been cleared, with no explanation. I spoke to the maitre d', said that we were celebrating a special birthday which his establishment was doing a pretty good job of spoiling, and asked how much longer we would be waiting. We were brought a round of cocktails on the house. After our main course arrived, the manager came over and explained that a party of 20 had been over an hour late for their reservation and that had put the kitchen behind.

Anyway, they knocked the price of the starters off the bill, plus all the drinks we'd had at the table, and the birthday boy was given a bottle of Taittinger to take home. If they'd told us after the starters that there would be a delay, it would have been fine and would have saved them about £150!

Someone complained about me once. Dh had been taken to A&E after an accident and I had no way to get to him so I was waiting for a phonecall.
Apparently I didnt smile.
Also had another customer make a joke snide comment because I wasnt chatty, I apologised and explained it was my first shift back since dg had died 3days previously.
Of course, for minimum wage, I should leave all issues behind and grin like a performing animal.
Checkout staff are regularly kept over their time without pay potentially bringing them below minimum wage but they have to be happy to have a job!

$1600 from an airline for being bumped 12 hours on a flight home (two tickets, so $800 each). This was mainly because I read the fine print on the leaflet about entitlements and didn't accept their offers of vouchers/hotels until I had been given the info.

Refund of 50% of the estate agency fee when I last sold a house in the UK - we complained to the ombudsman because they had failed to pass messages between us and the buyers, almost leading to the collapse of the sale.

It was definitely worth complaining in those cases! I try to be polite always and make sure I am talking to a decision maker. I really don't like it when people yell at someone who obviously isn't responsible for the problem (e.g. a waiter when the problem is the food, rather than calling over the manager).

Grumpasaurus. I guess you are not from Quebec then

I've had several "successful" complaints over the years, i.e. ones where I was very satisfied with the response. I've also been left fuming a couple of times when the response has been less than satisfactory.

Guess who I still deal with and whom I cut all ties with. Customer satisfaction is key to return business and word of mouth.

But, I have more empathy for a checkout person than a script reading no-face at the end of a phone.

$500 from my bank as rival banks were offering money, tablets, phones etc for new business and I asked them why I should stay with them (I didn't want to change banks but of course they didn't know that)

I don't think we Brits complain nearly enough. When we do, we usually do it badly and to the wrong people. I hate it when customers lose their rag at front-desk people, for things beyond the minion's control. That's downright inconsiderate. But I also hate it when people moan on and on about some poor service or goods they've received, then go all mimsy when you ask "Did you complain?" What's the point of that?!

We get overcharged for lots of things, and given poorer service, compared to more forthright nations. Twitter's been an absolute boon, ime, you can complain directly & everybody can see how your complaint's handled :) Twitter's no good if you're staring at an inedible restaurant meal, of course; you need to deal with that in the moment.

Come on, MNers, make your feelings known where it counts!

A few years back Clydesdale bank and I expect the other UK banks stopped issuing Switch cards and moved to Mastercard debit cards. I discovered that lots of things which I could use a Switch card for weren't accepting my card as they said the combination of numbers meant it wasn't a UK card. The first one was T - Mobile on my son's PAYG top up. I assumed it was T - Mobile's fault and of course the bank said it was T - Mobile's fault. Except other shops and sites returned the same fault, including the Post Office and to top it all a Clydesdale hole in the wall outside a Clydesdale bank.

I'd spent hours on the phone with the bank who were completely unhelpful. Except eventually they admitted they had messed up the transfer process. I had been one of their early transfers but after a couple of months the number of complaints were so great they had to investigate and it was all their fault.

Initially I was just pleased they sorted it out but then thought why should I have been put to all this trouble. They should have twigged right from the beginning that something had gone wrong and offered to help.

I complained and they agreed that they should have investigated with T - Mobile UK from the start and I got £50 back.

We also got Thomsons to cough up on refunding flights from Luton(or it might have been Stansted ( to Edinburgh. We were flying home from Jersey supposed to be direct to Edinburgh but for some reason we were sent to Luton and they were going to bus us home. No way on earth was that happening so we got flights from Luton/Stansted and then claimed it. They refused but on a very careful reading of the brochure for this holiday it was very badly worded and we were entitled to it. I think husband had raised a small claim and they were shocked anyone would bother.It would have been a big inconvenience for them to defend it and wasn't costing us anything.

I won a fight with Thomsons, too, Caitlin, but failed utterly with Easyjet. Never been stonewalled so professionally, for so long!

I could have done with your H advising on a small claim :)

I've had loads of small amounts of compensation from T - Mobile for things they've done wrong. They seem more than willing to take a fiver off a bill if their service hasn't been great.

My son and I were also upgraded to much swankier rooms in a hotel in Vienna not because we complained but because KLM had mislaid our luggage and the hotel felt sorry for us.

The nonsense with the Clydesdale bank debit card was actually quite funny by the end of it . Clydesdale still insisting it wasn't their fault as the list of shops/sites refusing the card increased.

The nice man in the T - Mobile shop told me it all came to a head with them as no Clydesdale customers had been able to get new contract phones in the run up to Christmas that year as the cards failed UK id/credit checks.

My exP was a semi professional complainer, though to be fair he did only complain about some pretty shit service (just very loudly and at great length til they gave him stuff to shut him up).

He had many free months of Lovefilm service, broadband service, supermarket vouchers... he had lots of business bank accounts and the service was uniformly shite from every bank he dealt with, he regularly had amounts credited to his account as compensation and on one occasion Barclays sent him an enormous hamper full of yummy food and several bottles of wine (worth hundreds when we checked!).

I once got a £10 Sainsburys voucher when I took some mouldy meat back. That's the only time I have ever dared complain and even then I felt like I was the one being unreasonable .

I think complaining about bad service is fine, if you also compliment on good service too.

People are quick to complain, but very rarely award good service.

I've got everything from free pizza to a £400 discount off a future booking for a holiday.

It's why I always complain about bad service and will always praise good service too

Took my Godmother out for her birthday to a rather posh and expensive gastropub near her house. I ordered liver & bacon & despite it not being a traditional ingredient of that dish asked them to check it had no tomatoes used - I have a rather unpleasant sensitivity to them. Started my meal & could taste something not quite right, and on closer inspection could see tiny flecks of what looked like tomato skin in the gravy. Sure enough on demanding that the waitress asked the chef, they had used tomato in it.

Cue offer of any other main course of my choice free from the menu (sadly my stomach was starting to feel the effect of tomato so declined), no charge of course for my main, and 50% off the bill for everything else. But I still would have preferred paying the full price and not feeling ill the rest of the day, and what if I'd had a full blown allergy reaction?

I agree, LJ. I always try and acknowledge good service, maybe on twitter or even in a letter or email to the business.

I work in retail and have been given promotions based mainly on good customer feedback about my service. So I always make sure I give some sort of feedback. In supermarkets if I've been served by somebody lovely I ask for their name and fill in a customer comment card.

:) I tried to give good feedback about a bus driver once, it was during a tube strike and he was just brilliant, really cheerful and packing loads of people in. The letter I got back sounded really sinister! "We will seek him out and deliver your feedback." I wondered if they didn't get many nice letters...

Someone I know had on going shit service from a shop, when they went back in to complain again, one of the staff members went to get a manager.
They saw the tannoy and decided to let the whole shop know what problems they had been having...
They got escorted out by security at the time but it was sorted through head office at a later date.

I complained about very poor service in a hot, stuffy restaurant which had mesh over the windows to keep out the swarms of flies coming from the swamp lake nearby. 60% was taken off the bill. Center Parcs take a bow!

This just very appropriately turned up on my FB feed

www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/03/12/how-to-complain/