Your worst customer service experiences?

[SpottySausageDog]

I found a thread on this from last hear but didn’t want to resurrect it with my own stories. I’ve worked in customer service myself a few times so know the standards that are expected which makes me more shocked when I have awful experiences! Name changed as some are local independent places.

1. In a local pub a few years back enjoying a pint with a friend. Two of our old friends came stumbling in and insisted on buying us more drinks even though ours were pretty much full. They ordered £20 worth of drinks. Funnily enough when it came to paying their card was declined and when asked what they were going to do about payment they legged it. Pints were already pulled so the arse of a landlady looked to us for payment. Threatened to call the police on us if we didn’t pay so I ended up footing the bill. It was 30 minutes before closing time so we couldn’t even drink them. Looking back I should have just told her to get a grip! We weren’t even at the bar when the drinks were being ordered. She should have called the police and shown them the cctv of the guys actually ordering the drinks. Still makes me seethe to this day! Never stepped foot in that place again.

2. KFC - well renowned for being painfully slow and always fucking orders up. My partner and I ordered a ‘boneless dipping banquet’. I like the dips it comes with, especially the buttermilk garlic mayo. When we got the food we checked it and asked about the dips. The woman behind the till said ‘we’ve not got the holders for them’. Meaning the cardboard strip with holes in for the dips. I said ‘well have you got the dips’. She said yes and looked at me completely gone out. I asked ‘can we just have the dips then please’ and she responded with ‘no sorry they come in the holder and we don’t have any of those’. I gave up and walked out as it was late at night and I would have lost my shit😂

3. NHS and LA - particularly midwifery services. Pregnant with my second child. Self referral by phone call in my area. Phone line always in use when I was free to call so tried for a whole week to book when I found out at 11 weeks (irregular periods, heavily documented on my medical records). I had to resort to emailing the leisure centre in which they’re based to get them to put me through to the midwives over email. I got an email from an ‘@midwifebasename.com’ address and I responded giving them my info. Never got a response so I went for a private scan and saw a private midwife for my first appointment. I finally managed to get an NHS appointment for 20 weeks (thought I was 23 because of irregular periods and incorrect dating on private scan). Midwife denied all knowledge of there even being an email system at their base and pretended as if the woman I spoke to didn’t exist. I showed her the email, my private scan and that data from my private midwife appointment. She still referred me to social services straight away (they are instructed to do so if you come in after 23 weeks as it’s seen as ‘concealing the pregnancy’) and I’m still currently going through the legal complaints side as they have put me through so much stress. So glad I have plenty of evidence against them. Funnily enough I’ve been having 3 weekly growth scans at the hospital so they can cover their own arses if anything goes wrong. Baby is growing perfectly and there are no obvious issues but they’re still insisting on them. SS have also messed me around in the process. Woman who came out to see me arranged a second home visit which my partner had to take unpaid time off work for as he couldn’t be present the first time. Luckily it was done over text. She never turned up, no reason or apology given. We have CCTV so it can be easily proved. I got an unannounced visit the other week because it had been passed on. She didn’t even log the appointment or any of the info I gave her at her first visit and she is on long term sick. It was escalated to child protection because they thought I was refusing visits. Absolute fucking shambles. Luckily there is no child in danger! Will be taking it up with my MP soon so he can address any failures in their system.

What’s everyone else’s worst/most bizarre experiences?

Gullivers Kingdom. Way way back in the days before email I sent them a letter after talking ds to their park and finding half of it closed. Particularly annoying was the fact it’s seemingly on the side of a mountain and we’d climbed to the top of it only to find all the rides up there out of order.
The letter that arrived basically said tough, don’t visit if you don’t like it.
It was on the doorstep, and I never visited again. I also told all my school mum friends and shared the letter and they never visited either.
When I have grandkids they won’t be going. I can hold a grudge for England me.

As for Arnold Clark.... “I have never accepted a rejection of any car madam “ said the salesman after having our new car for six weeks out of the two months we owned it as they couldn’t actually fix the fault with the thing.
I’d feel guilty that I’d ruined his perfect record if he wasn’t such a twat.

@BearSoFair what a wanker the Argos worker sounded like, as if you were going to use your phone for nefarious purposes, some people eh.

Actually the sign is there for a reason to state this till is closed. I dont get paid past my time and can actually lose money if I do not clock out on time.

OK. As a counter to all the shitty customer service stories:

I was in my local petrol station the other day. Touched my card to the reader. My card was declined. I inserted and typed in my PIN . Declined. Bugger. Not enough in my day to day account to pay for 20 quids worth of petrol. Bugger bugger bugger.

The woman behind the counter, who I know by name and has been there for years, had her purse out and was trying to pay for my fuel saying, "I know you'll pay me back" before I managed to get a different card out of my own wallet and beat her to it.

Also the sign is not put up if I have a que of people . I'm stating when the sign is there and customers ignore it and can see I'm closing but carry on regardless and these people haven't been queuing they just turn up.

Who in their right mind pays a £250 deposit for a car they've not even seen or test driven yet !!!

@bearsofair I don’t see why an Argos worker would try and upsell a computer game, they don’t work on commission do they? Also don’t you just go in, fill the little form in, pay and collect the game? How would they even get a chance to speak to you?

Nasty Thread

Grow up. Nobody said all businesses or staff are shit.

Our local Mini dealership will remove things from the car or exchange them with older parts, when you buy a used car from them. I thought I got treated like that because I am a woman, but it appears to be business as usual for them.

Who in their right mind pays a £250 deposit for a car they've not even seen or test driven yet

Its a fairly standard thing amongst some franchises. If they have branches all across the UK they will bring cars between those branches for you, however, they want a show of goodwill and charge a £250 deposit to weed out the time wasters. Deposit is returned when you view the car whether you buy it or not.
Stops the pisstakers essentially.

Virgin Media massively let us down a whole ago. We have not had internet for the most part of 2 months, intermittently in the early mornings and late at night only, and but even always, nothing during the day. Some days there was nothing at all. I was on maternity leave housebound with my sin who was not very well, and could not do any online shopping, checking anything, watching Netflix, it was a very long and boring period. We had four engineer visits scheduled, each cancelled on the day or the day before with no apologies or nothing. They refused a refund based on the fact that we had some Internet during the two month period.
After two months we got pissed off, switched to a different provider and since then they keep on ringing and trying to see if we want to switch back. Nope, don't think so.

Horrible autocorrect above, apologies! It was meant to read nothing during the days, and most of the time nothing at all.

In our village post office a couple of years ago, I was stood waiting in the queue for a good 15 minutes (I'm disabled and use a crutch as a walking & stability aid, and was at almost crying levels of pain by this point) while the woman chatted for ages to every customer ahead of me instead of serving them.

Finally got to the front of the queue and told her I would like to send 4 parcels. She immediately said 'step aside for a moment while I serve the rest of the queue, they only have quick transactions.'

I'm usually quite mild, but I point blank refused, telling her I was in pain and had queued up same as everyone else. Well, she huffed and puffed right through taking my parcels, muttering 'but the queue' under her breath, leaning over to apologise to the other people! I'd really had enough by this point and said 'if you learned to serve and chat at the same time, maybe you would get through your queues a bit quicker.'

I've never set foot in that place since. I used to spend quite a bit in the shop, too, but now we go to the next village post office/shop instead.

Beko

TLDR version - left without a dishwasher for over a month, with at least 10 promises of calls within 24 hours, none of which were ever received - and possibly all my personal details lost in the post!

Long version:

Our 6 month old dishwasher stopped working, not ideal but it happens. An engineer attended within a week and diagnosed the problem and said it needed a part. So far so good.

Then nothing for 3 weeks. After the 1st week I called at least 5 times and was told they couldn't see what the hold up was but I should expect a call back within 24 hours, none of these calls ever came.
The engineer eventually came back, the replacement part was also faulty and the engineer could tell it had already been unpacked and returned once. He said he would arrange a replacement dishwasher as we'd already been waiting so long. "you'll get a call within 24 hours." Next day I call them "he didn't put the request through, you'll get a call within 24 hours" I call the next day "You'll get a call within 24 hours" I call the next day "It's 24 working hours, you'll get a call within the next 3 days" This time I wasn't letting them off the phone.

Explained the situations again and again. He wanted the engineer to confirm it was beyond repair - I explained again it wasn't beyond repair but we'd already waited over a month. He then said he wanted to send another engineer to confirm it was beyond repair! After about an hour on the phone I eventually got a code form them to allow AO to issue a replacement. AO were brilliant and dealt with it in a few days including fitting the new and taking away the old one.

During the above I requested recording of my phone calls. So much had gone wrong at this point I can't remember what point I was trying to prove! I was told a USB stick had been sent out by post, but it never arrived - but not to worry as it had the highly secure password of "Beko2019" to protect my personal data! They are now claiming it was actually never sent out.

The compliant is still on-going, I actually received my first call from Beko from Nathan who assumed me he was dealing with it personally taking it very seriously and would call back within a week...that was 3 weeks ago! I 'm going to give it 1 month from his call before going to the ICO.

Laura Ashley. Ordered two lampshades online. The wrong lampshades were delivered along with details of another customer (perhaps the customer who had ordered the lampshades I received). When I contacted them to advise of their error, I received no apology and was told I would not receive the correct item or be reimbursed until the wrong lampshades were collected from my house. They was no option to specify a particular date which was suitable and once a date was confirmed, no timeframe for collection could be given. No acknowledgement that their solution to their error was inconvenient at best and costly and unreasonable.Was told I could not post them back. I did. Couldn’t believe that was the standard of service from Laura Ashley. I got reimbursed and bought new lampshades somewhere else.

B&M seems to be pretty bad universally

Avon It was the guy at the desk where you hand the slip over. Typed it in, read out the game, and said "there's a newer version that came out this week for the Switch" I said no thanks, it's PS4 we have "but the Switch is newer! Don't you want the newest release?" No, we have a PS4 not a Switch, "well, ok, but this is an older game.."

Had salesmen talk to my husband rather than me when I was buying a car. He told them it was nothing to do with him. They still spoke to only him.

Pablos fish and chip shop in Blackpool. Very, very rude woman on the counter. I ordered very clearly and she argued about what I'd said. "No you didn't say smoked sausage!" Of course I fucking did. I know what I want and if I wanted plain sausages I wouldn't have said smoked! So, realising she must be deaf as a post or as ignorant as a cat, I tried to be even more clear when ordering and she was still writing the wrong things down and was really snippy when I politely corrected her (with my very British apologies)
Then my dad asked for the teatime special or whatever it was of fish and chips and a mug of tea. She actually yelled at him! She said, "I'm not taking drinks orders yet! Does it look like I'm taking drinks orders?!". So when he did order his drink he asked for a black tea, no milk.

He got a milky tea.

She'd had such a go at me and my family that dad don't want to complain so he drank his gross lukewarm milky tea. Looking at the reviews, nasty rude staff is the norm there as well as bad food.

On the subject of rest breaks..my shifts are 8.30am until 6.00pm...I get one 30 minute break usually around 2pm....I work alone and there is no one to cover me so I have to close for the 30 minutes....almost every day I will have someone kicking off at me that i took a break....I have even had people snap at me because I nipped out to the loo and was gone 2 mins.....

I asked for £50 cashback & could I have it in £10 notes, she refused saying they weren't a bank, I got what I was given.

Well they're not a bank. Every shop I've ever worked in only allows limited notes in the till, she might not have had 5 £10 notes in the till and if she had then you could have wiped them out and forced to give change to the next person in £5 notes.

To those of you who defend bad customer service by saying some customers are awful: just remember you are being paid to provide a service to the customer, and who do you think pays you? Yes, your employer puts the money into your bank account - but where do they get the money from? That's right - the customer, so what do you think happens when you can't be bothered to grit your teeth, smile, and try your best to deal with the situation in a pleasant manner!

You all need to check out the customer services dingbats and disasters page on Facebook

"To those of you who defend bad customer service by saying some customers are awful: just remember you are being paid to provide a service to the customer, and who do you think pays you? Yes, your employer puts the money into your bank account - but where do they get the money from? That's right - the customer, so what do you think happens when you can't be bothered to grit your teeth, smile, and try your best to deal with the situation in a pleasant manner!"

There it is folks; it's ok to be treated like less than human because "I pay your wages".