Name and Shame

[brizzledrizzle]

Name and shame the lousy customer service you've had - if you want to get it off your chest.

I'll start the ball rolling with Plusnet who have screwed up my elderly mother's phone. She was going to move late next week and it's all fallen through so we phoned them yesterday and were on hold for two hours. They have left her with a disconnected phone even though it wasn't supposed to be disconnected until next week and have done nothing to fix it. They promised it would be fixed by midnight yesterday but isn't and she's been in tears about it as she lives alone and is reliant on the phone. I've sorted out a pay as you go for her for now.

I've named and shamed on Twitter and written recorded delivery to the CEO.

James Villas
Did not provide everything they advertised. Inclusive rental car not available on arrival. Villa not cleaned since last visitors. Unsafe appliances. No lights. Rep quit and left us stranded. Villa owner was really rude and JV still don't give a toss.

vampire Did you not notice that there was no money leaving your account each month?

@SpoonBender yes don't do it. After we gave up we ordered from Victoria Plumb and can't fault them

Better bathrooms. After reading reviews online that said it's difficult to get them to sort out any issues I decided to do a thorough check of everything on delivery. The delivery guys refused, started swearing at me and saying they didn't have time to let me check things. One of them stood over me and wouldn't move until I signed for the delivery. I carried on checking. When I did sign the delivery note said in bold at the bottom ' our drivers are paid to allow you 20 mins to check deliveries we don't accept goods back if you have taken delivery of them'

Cotswold company I've been waiting for months for stuff to come back into stock despite one of the three items actually being in stock as they are waiting to deliver everything together. If I'd ordered each item separately it would have cost the same and I'd have dining chairs by now

Curry's / Hotpoint. Bought a washer/tumble that smelt horrendous when opened. No amount of hot cycles cleared it. Told I should buy extended warranty to get an engineer and because the smell is subjective, I'll probably have to pay call out. Furious.

Vodafone - kept charging on a contract we'd definitely cancelled and had had confirmation in writing.

Scottish Power - totally screwed up the billing, couldn't set us up a direct debit, added charges they shouldn't have done. Staff don't know their arse from their elbow, don't make a record of phone calls, each one tells you something different.

I bought a kitchen from Benchmarx this time last year. The salesmen hadn't taken the measurements correctly for 2 runs of cabinets, so the cabinets they sent me didn't fit. They tried to sell me double the amount of worktop needed, (solid, so not cheap!) I got overcharged over £1500 - part of this amount was for a Neff oven that I'd bought from John Lewis!

I had to repeatedly ask for a list of components that I'd paid for, when I eventually received it there was so much stuff on there there that I'd been charged for and had never ordered/received. A huge amount of the order was missing too, every day I'd have to chase them up about yet another thing missing. Was a nightmare trying to get them to pay me back the £1500 they overcharged me.

So I’m not the only one to be charged by Vodafone for a contract I had paid to be cancelled! I’d moved overseas so it took a while for me to realise the DD still coming out of my uk account. Once I did, I cancelled then had months and months of them threatening bailiffs, bailiffs emailing me, me trying to call from Australia to sort out (hard with time difference). Everyone I spoke to said “oh yes I can see you cancelled there’s a note” and nothing happened! Took 7 months to get refunded over 300. Then, I discovered a few months later that it still showed up as a default in my credit rating when we were trying to get a mortgage (back in UK at this point). I saw red, and shouted down the phone at them- to be fair, this was sorted out quickly and within a day it had gone from my credit rating but their service is shocking. Never again.

We have a local taxi company and when my dad found a girl who’d been attacked (and more) he took her there and they refused to help or call and ambulance so he had to drag the poor fucking lass down the road to another one who were amazing. It makes me cry even thinking about it.
I’d rather slit my own throat and crawl to the hospital than ring a taxi from there. They were all over the local news though and reprimanded by a judge so at least they’ve had soem repurcussions for their horrifically inhumane actions.

Sorry if I’ve lowered the tone

Virgin Media - hooked our account up at the phone exchange to someone else’s house who liked to call Germany for 4 or 5 hours a day and ran up a £800 bill. We didn’t actually use our landline (we didn’t even own a phone). Took a couple of weeks to get the fault fixed. We were also demonstrably overseas when it started. Took a further 3 months to get the charges reversed including some twat telling me that my husband was probably lying to me and making the calls. How he managed to do that whilst working in San Francisco remains a mystery

Lufthansa - for telling us last Sunday night that the reason our bags weren’t delivered at Heathrow was because it was too windy outside to drive the machinery. It was around 5 mph (that’s almost completely still, for those playing along at home). The Lufthansa manager also refused to leave his office and speak to the 30 odd passengers without bags 2.5 hours after arrival, leaving the poor general desk manager to cope with us.

Carphone warehouse

Messed up my new contract by giving me a 5th of the data I was paying for then insisting I'd bought a deal with the smaller amount, even though they never offered such a deal. They refused to do anything about it.

Luckily EE were absolutely amazing in fixing it for me and upping my data for not too much extra.

TalkTalk are awful. We arranged a contract with them and they failed to deliver what they promised (internet and broadband speed). The broadband keeps falling off leaving us with nothing; when it works it is about 1/10 of the speed they advertised.

We have rung them so many times. They do the same thing every time - speed checks which come up wanting, then they say that to 'escalate' our complaint they will have to do further checks, which take hours. Then they say they will send an engineer out and if we're not in it will cost us £50 odd. The engineer comes but he doesn't even ring the bell, but we have watched the drive closely and accosted everyone who comes near the house, so we nab him. The engineer finds nothing wrong with our equpment and says they'll get BT on the case. BT check things out and say their equiment is unable to provide those speeds. We phone TalkTalk again, and they can't escalate our complaint until they've made these checks - and there we are right back at the beginning again.

Luckily, the contract is now nearly up and we shall not be staying with them.

Definitely Scottish Power, I moved into my house last February and they are STILL trying to charge me for the previous occupants usage, despite many back and forth emails with proof of completion etc/endless phone calls I now have a debt recovery company chasing me on their behalf who seem just and stupid and incompetent themselves

Lemondrizzle: Second Green Motion - We live in Ireland but were in UK (Manchester) in March.

When we walked into their depot, we were the only customers. Two guys spoke to each other, looked at us and laughed. We obviously looked askance at them and one said something so ridiculous and unbelievable but hey ho.

They suggested we took a Merc which was on a 'special' and it was a good deal. Me and partner were dressed up for a Christening so maybe we looked like we had money...

We took the Merc. Lovely.

We drove the hire car for half hour each way. All good roads, good weather, nothing untoward.

Got back and they 'found' some scratch on the wheel.... extremely officious with us from that point on and got their camera out to take pictures of 'damage'.

Think we were set up to take the Merc and get shafted with a stonking bill but luckily, we had taken out full insurance with zero excess...

My belief is that is what the cheeky bastards were laughing at when we walked in - they'd marked us out as as suckers for a huge repair bill.

Never Never Never go with Green Motion again.

I'm not one for complaining but

Curry's - customer service is shocking, products are shit! And delivery is even worse this just annoys me when I think about it.

British Gas/EON - cut a long story short. Moving from EON to BG, British Gas say they've managed to take our elec but unable to take gas because eon keep coming back saying we are in debt but we have £400 in credit, eon say BG don't have elec as they are still the supplier. Find out we are paying for someone else's gas/elec so phone BG to cancel, they can't let us cancel since they have our elec supply and don't believe me when I say that eon still have it, they want someone from eon to call them to confirm this, I call eon ask and they can't call BG as it isn't their protocol. Go back to BG tell them that they insist so back to EON again and nope they won't call BG and BG won't call EON so now we are paying for 2 suppliers because we can't cancel and there is now an investigation going on from EON to find out who's elec and gas we've been paying for but we still need to pay it till they find out!
The customer service that I've had of BG is absolutely shocking, not one person has been able to help us, I've tried to speak to managers haven't been allowed, team leaders no not allowed to talk to them either. Over the past 2 months I'll have spend 20+ hours on the phone between BG and EON to sort this out. I've had to send a written complaint to BG and now have to wait 8 weeks before I can get in touch with the ombudsman. Rage doesn't cover how I feel 😡 BG are also now trying to take the correct supply and won't let me cancel that either!

@PsychedelicSheep I'm dealing with EON/British Gas right now but it seems to have been longer than 8 weeks that you've been dealing with this for, phone the ombudsman and they'll deal with it. I feel like ripping my hair out when I have to keep going in between eon and bloody British Gas! 😡😡😡

Interesting to see AO on here twice. Really similarly we recently ordered from them as we’d had excellent service a couple of years ago but this order was a disaster.
Website fine but the delivery guys were awful, rude with a massive attitude problem. Tried to leave without the old one even though we’d paid for that service. Then ripped our guttering off the wall on their way out - not at all apologetic, just said it must have been badly installed!

Behappy ive threatened them with the ombudsman a couple of times but not got my shit together enough to actually contact them yet, is looking like I'm gonna have to though!

@PsychedelicSheep hopefully the ombudsman will be able to help! I phoned them the other day and since I only put my complaint in last week i have another 7 weeks before I'm able to call them again for help. I am raging though that we are paying for two electricity supplies! 😡 I'll be paying a fee to leave early if not hopefully after all of this they'll just let me leave if the ombudsman get involved.

Esure. DH has no claims since 2013. They had our insurance from April last year. At that time everything was arranged online and within a fortnight they said they had found DHs no claims discount info, but payments stayed at £60 a month. On renewal it went down to £35.
Car broke down and was scrapped at the end of October so DH rang and cancelled. Nothing other than a letter stating cancellation sent.
Bought another bigger car in mid November so DH goes back to them, all done online. Quoted £31 a month, and £60 upfront.
Within a week they sent a letter stating he owed them £25 from our previous policy, pay up within 5 days or they would cancel new policy. He emailed and said this was incorrect but they refused to budge. Made it clear we would be hard pressed finding insurance if they cancelled and it would be a lot more if we did and we wouldn't be able to pay monthly so he reluctantly paid.
A week after and a letter arrived, dated for 5 days before but not posted until a day before it arrived- send photos of front, rear, side and engine bay within 7 days or they would cancel. Did that straight off, as that left us a day from the date of the letter.
Within a day, an email- where is your no claims certificate, send it within 3 days of this email-no photocopies-or, that's right, they'd cancel.
At this point DH has had a gutfull. I looked online and no claims discount info comes from your previous policy holder and should be sent when your policy closes. Esure have never sent this, not once. I looked in his online policy hub and it's blank. It also said this was requested in page 2 of the welcome pack sent by them with new policy- this didn't turn up for another 3 days.
DH phoned them and explained he has had enough. Last time we agreed a policy we never had any of the above. They admitted they should send the no claims info but are stating DH has only a year. We asked them how they got that idea as they confirmed he had a no claims discount in April last year but they wouldn't have any of it. DH asked to be put through to cancel and they refused unless he paid fees and costs of £200!
They then said as he has only a year no claims they are putting the monthly payments up to over £45. He felt he had no choice but to agree.
They are appallingly rude. The guy heard me say to DH we should ask to speak to complaints and he said to tell me they won't care. They also said they would flag DH as having fabricated his no claims info.
We are now stuck with them for a year and I dread to think what they'd be like if we have to claim.

AA
My parents were members for over 30 years and when my dad dropped dead suddenly whilst away from home for the weekend they refused to bring his beloved car home, leaving it in a field until we could drive 4 hours each way to collect this, despite my parent having full membership. The air ambulance came, the police & ambulance service came, his body was brought home a few days later but the AA? No calls back & no response to complaints & then a renewal putting the premium up! Shame on you AA 😡

Australia Post - not likely to affect most of you Mums, but Oh my god, they hold us hostage here.
They raised our standard postage from 70c t0 $1 on the same day that they announced that a normal, garden-variety letter was now no longer going to take three standard working days to be delivered (which is too bloody long in this day and age - I have lived and worked elsewhere and wonder what the excuse is....) and now takes a minimum of FIVE.

I have NEVER had mail delivered on time since. NOTHING takes less than TEN DAYS to be posted and it costs SO MUCH MONEY!!!
We also have basically got four banks who control all the money and two supermarkets who between them happen to also own all the petrol, the alcohol, the home insurance, everything. Everything in the country is price-fixed and it is soooo fucking expensive.
I want to leave.

Nonsense, justilou. You've got a point about bloody Aust Post but we have independent supermarkets, independent petrol stations, independent alcohol shops and how on earth did you decide that you can only get home insurance through Coles or Woolies?

Banking with the big four is also a choice. We use a credit union.

They all own each other.... There are no independent bloody supermarkets near me. I have to drive so far out of my way and give Coles or Woollies more money in petrol to find one.

Sounds like most online companies are problematic