To ask if you've ever had compensation for complaining..?

[thinkingoutloud4]

So I was in Tesco last week getting our weekly food shopping with my DP, when a member of staff came out of the warehouse section with a large trolley filled to the brim with produce to fill the shelves with.
The staff member didn't check behind him before moving out onto the shop floor, and pushed the trolley into my ankle causing a nasty gash, and quite a lot of blood 🥴
He was lovely and really very apologetic, I was hurt but not extremely and although he offered an ambulance 😆 I politely declined.

The store asked to take my details to make note of the accident, which I complied with and left my name and address etc for their accident log.

Anyway.. fast forward to today, and I've received a lovely letter in the post from the store manager, and a store voucher for £150. I'm completely blown away!

it got me thinking, as i remember once a friend of mine once said her sister complains as a hobby to companies and receives large amounts of free items, vouchers etc...

have you ever been sent something from a company following a complaint?

I have just sent a thank you letter back to Tesco, as I am completely shocked and so grateful for their lovely gesture!! 💖

I've remembered a second one. We were (fortunately) sitting downstairs when we noticed a burning smell (followed by our smoke alarm going off). My son's White Company robe was on fire in an upstairs bathroom. It was a towelling one just hanging on a heated towel rail, luckily I was able to throw it out of the window.

They sent me two free towelling robes though their investigation of the remains didn't find the cause. If we hadn't have been in, it could have destroyed our house.

I ordered dinner directly from a well known London sushi chain on New Years Eve. Was about £85 ish. My husband went to pick it up but there was chaos outside, 50 people waiting; he waited for a good hour, hadn’t brought a coat but couldn’t wait in the car as no one knew which order things were coming out in. Meanwhile all the Deliveroo drivers were getting their orders quickly but anyone who ordered direct from the restaurant wasn’t getting anything. Tried calling etc to no avail.
Eventually got the food, they’d thrown in a free bottle of asahi, he came home and we ate it, was great. Didn’t think anything more of it.
A few days later had the most lovely email from the restaurant apologising profusely.
They also offered a £50 voucher for our next visit. They also said they were giving us a full refund.
It was above and beyond. Bearing in mind they’d also given us a beer on the day too.
I called them and insisted they didn’t refund us, we’d eaten the food and it was lovely, it was a bit annoying but didn’t spoil our evening. I am not that comfortable with businesses having to give compensation, especially in the current client and even more especially the beleaguered hospitality industry.
We haven’t used the voucher either but we are ordering again next weekend and can’t decide whether we should or not.

Got £3k from HSBC for the disaster they made our house purchase.

Quite a bit of that was money we'd shelled out due to their incompetence so it just paid us back but there was a chunk of 'goodwill'. Hollow laugh.

I used to answer holiday complaint letters. We compensated hundreds of thousands each year. Not because Mr Brown from Kettering was correct in his complaint ‘the food was too forrin’, it was cheaper in the long run to bung him £50 than deal with his letter after letter demanding compensation for a ‘ruined holiday’ because Paella was on the menu twice in a week.

We had £50 from Barclays a couple of years ago. My husband went to pay for something in a shop and his card was declined as it had expired. He never used it online so wasn’t aware of the expiry date and it was odd that he hadn’t been sent a replacement before that date.

I called Barclays and it turned out that they’d sent his new card and various pieces of correspondence to our previous address. It’s a joint account and our ‘new’ address was listed for me and he’d in fact had his previous cards sent to the new address as we’d been living there for six years by that point but for some unexplained reason their system had reverted to using the previous address for him.

I’m actually still waiting for a bit of compensation from Ikea. I ordered an item of furniture last April which wasn’t delivered until June and when it arrived it was very slightly damaged. I didn’t fancy going through the whole palaver of returning it (the stores were still closed when it was delivered) and waiting for a redelivery so said I’d keep it as when built up the damage wasn’t noticeable and I was told that I could have a 10% reduction.
9 months later I’m still waiting.

@thinkingoutloud4 I just spotted your reply/post earlier that you're already doing an essentials shop to donate to the less fortunate (which I suggested late in the gae and wothoit seeing your earlier post). Just wanted to say that you rock and that that is freaking awesome!!!

Oh, and Next gave my son a free hoodie after I complained.
He’d chosen one he liked and it said online that it was available in their store in the Bullring. We couldn’t find them in the menswear department at all so I asked a member of staff if they could help, they couldn’t so called over a colleague and they proceeded to have an argument (not in English) in front of us, after a few minutes we were obviously not going to get anywhere and were feeling uncomfortable so we left. I think the value was around £30.

You've inspired me to write to a grocery store whose very kind employee paid for my groceries when I couldn't find my card. He allowed me to leave the store and pay him online when I got home. Only question is - will he get in trouble? Would he have been allowed to do that?

My daughter gave me a Virgin experience voucher for a restaurant in London and she and I went together for dinner.They made a big fuss about the voucher, had to check up, made us feel humiliated etc. Eventually, we had our meal, but it was a bit spoilt by their attitude. They gave us a voucher for their sister restaurant to make up for our disappointment.

So DH and I go to the sister restaurant, or so we believe, for lunch, and at the end of the meal we produce the voucher. We are then informed that we are actually at a restaurant of the same name as the sister restaurant, but it has no connection. We must have looked a bit crestfallen, as they insisted that we could have the lunch for free anyway!

Finally, we went to the actual sister restaurant and had a very good meal.

So that Virgin experience voucher really was the gift which kept on giving!

When I was 12 I had a Kit Kat which was just solid chocolate, no water. I sent some of it back and got a proper Kit Kat and a £5 shopping voucher

*Wafer

Contacted super drug after buying several baby food jars from local store. One of them looked funny (don't remember twhat was wrong exactly) , checked the best before date... 1 year out of date! They send me a letter with an apology and told me they will be retraining their staff about stock rotation, and gave me a 50£voucher.

It was very unexpected and was greatful at the time as could use it too put towards more baby related items. I only wrote to them cause I was very concerned about baby food a year out of date being sold.

I complained about the staff in a well-known department store being rude to me on three separate occasions (I wrote one letter detailing the three) and they sent me half a florist's, which was nice.

My dh got £200 cheque sent after making a compliant, the manager listened to the recorded phone call and was completely on dh side. Dh wasn't expecting any sort of compensation so was very shocked about it

I bought a dkny handbag, I used it and still was able to return it for a full refund 9 months later! They did say I can get a replacement or refund, opted for the refund

We also had 2 years worth of free WiFi from sky, after complaining about the internet being slow!

I hav complained dozens of times in my lifetime, always truthfully and always reasonable.

I have received both appreciation and compensation for my time.

I have received several lots of vouchers recently, unasked for, for awful customer service from several lage companies.

Full marks to them.

4 years ago I ordered a load of stuff from mothercare in the January sales, everything was at least 50% off and I spent £50. I ordered it to be delivered to my work, on the website when putting the address in it was one of those where you put the postcode in and select from a drop down. 5 minutes after ordering I noticed on the confirmation the first line of the address was missing. Their customer services was closed but I emailed and tweeted and was told they would update the address.
It didn't arrive. It got returned to sender due to insufficient address details. Mothercare said they were unable to intercept the order as it arrived back into them, and instead I would need to reorder. By this point it was all out of stock. I got £30 in vouchers as well as the refund, I had to fight for it though.

I remembered another

Plusnet for some reason cancelled my direct debit. I contacted them to advise them of this and got told they would reinstate it and take the payment within a week. Fine.

They didn't. Next payment date came no direct debit. Checked with the bank that they hadn't cancelled it or stopped it and they hadn't. Spoke to Plusnet again who said it was a system error and they'd definitely reinstate it and take payment. Fine.

6 months later still no payments. I've left the money in the account so they can take it. They don't take it. I advise them a third time. It's a common error well take payment bla bla. Ok.

We have a problem with the internet.

I ring them.

We don't have a problem, they've actually cut me off for none payment.

I tell them the whole story and they don't believe me. They say I've cancelled the direct debit. I send them all the previous live chat transcripts.

They apologised for the "misunderstanding" but called me a liar basically so I complained.

I got the whole year free and then swiftly switched to a company who knew what they were doing!

I once complained to Tesco because we'd done a big birthday BbQ with about 40 guests. All the bread rolls I'd bought for the burgers had sharp bits of shredded plastic in them. I was really pissed off but all I got was the rolls refunded.

Also complained to co op about something once, they took all my details but I never got the promised voucher.

Oh and I also complained about a pack of wispas that were missing their middles. Just the sides and what should have been the bottom. Got a £10 Cadbury voucher for that

Laura Mercier assistant was uncharacteristically unhelpful. I tweeted, the LG regional manager called me and after taking details, sent me a full size foundation, plus a cosmetics bag full of full size products. I loved their stuff prior to this and am happy to recommend it, so hats off to them for turning things round.
Free bags of Haribo, complained about mouldy tasting gums. Money off white goods at John Lewis after our old model broke far too early but outside warranty. Vouchers from Next when a light fitting exploded. Vouchers from M and S when the three for twos didn't discount properly at the till. Discount off a holiday after Centre Parcs hadn't cleaned our lodge which was truly filthy.
I'm a big fan of complaining factually and politely and asking what they plan to do to rectify things.

I never complain but I was given a chicken wrap on a BA night flight despite pre ordering the veggie meal and then being reassured twice it wasn’t meat I took two bites before I asked a third time and a very pale faced air steward took it off me and offered me some champagne. I emailed BA suggesting solutions more than complaining, proposing a colour system where it would be harder to make this mistake and maybe some more training, my main concern was if this was to happen with an allergy the outcome would have been deadly.
I received an immediate apology from the CEO, 50,000 avios and was surprised with a upgrade to business next time I flew with them.
It was wonderful!

I currently feel that my life is karma for my mothers antics. I'm a hotel manager so part of my life involves dealing with genuine complaints and tryers....

Once on a family weekend away there was a small fire in the kitchen of a hotel we were staying, fire alarm went off in the middle of then night - hotel was evacuated, small fire put out everyone back to there rooms and breakfast fine in the morning. My mother complained and got the stay for free and then a free stay a couple years later with an upgrade to a suite (posh hotel) when we went again.

I have not once in my career ever compensated a guest for a fire evacuation, a procedure to keep you safe in an emergency, occasionally I think what my mum must have said to them to get a refund and I actually cringe.

£5 sainsburys voucher in the 90s because I was only allowed one carrier bag for an overflowing basket if food, which split on the bus home. Also had a back pack but the tins went in that. The carrier bag was still stuffed and bags for life weren't a thing, then.

Yes. A £10 supermarket voucher. Free nappies another time.
Both were over ten years ago now.