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!! 💖

@Bathwater oh gosh! I've once had a funny cheese experience.. I am put off for life now and don't go anywhere near cheese 😂😂 xx

I got flowers and wine 3 years in a row because Aviva kept sending "Have you thought about life insurance?" Letters to my dead partner

@Chewwithyourfuckingmouthclosed oh my
Goodness that is absolutely awful. I am so sorry.

20 years ago i got £50 from b&q for a bay window that arrived with no external window sill (they were using our local store as an experiment and were branching out into double glazing). Luckily the fitter noticed before they started removing the old windows. Unfortunately I had lost a days pay.

My neighbour gets loads of freebies and compo because she complains about everything too. Wonder if it's your friend's sister? I do complain when I'm really annoyed, but it has to have really riled me rather than mildly inconvenienced me. So if something happens and the attitude is a shrug and so what, or my whole shopping delivery is spoiled because of a rogue open yoghurt and lack of bags which had been paid for (looking at you here Asda) then yes I would and have received compensation in modest amounts.

Well kind of, but I never got it.

A few weeks ago I needed to buy a new iphone because mine was knackered. I made a special trip to town in the pissing down rain on the bus to Stormfront, the local Apple retailer to buy my new iphone. I’d asked for what I wanted, the man behind the counter had been out the back to fetch it and was taking my details for the warranty when DS pointed out to me that the chip and pin card machines were touch screen, then he read out the sign saying that they weren’t exception cash. I am blind and can’t use touch screen so I told the guy behind the counter expecting the store to have thought about this when they put in the new touch screen machines. First thing the guy behind the counter said was that they’d had someone already point this issue out to them but nothing has been done, and there’s no other way of paying so I can’t buy my phone and my trip on the bus in the pissing rain was wasted.

I managed to get a new phone from Argos in the end but I had to go back to the Stormfront shop to get a screen protector put on as I only like the Apple approved ones.

I wrote an email of complaint to Stormfront’s head office, which I had to chase up a week later by phone, complaining about the fact that blind people aren’t able to make purchases of over £45 at their stores which is discrimination, and not only that as if it weren’t bad enough, the issue had already been raised weeks earlier and nothing had been done.

I eventually got a telephone call back from a very apologetic woman who said they were most terribly sorry, they take accessibility very seriously, of course they do blah blah, and they would sort it out as soon as possible, but in the mean time they’d like to refund me the money for the screen protector I’d paid for as they had been unable to sell me the phone and my journey had been wasted. Somebody from accounts would be calling me and I would be reimbursed. That was 6 weeks ago and I’m still waiting.

If there’s anyone from Stormfront head office reason your company is shit and they don’t care about disability discrimination.

I got a voucher for 2 free boxes of Weetabix after I complained that the contents of my Banana Weetabix box was actually just regular Weetabix

I got a £5 voucher from Cadbury after breaking a tooth on a bar of Fruit & Nut. Got double my money back from Asda after finding big lumps of hard shiny black plastic in my sandwich (about £3)
Best one was BT - I moved into my new house, paid for the engineer to come out and connect the phone line, along with the first month’s line rental and when he turned up he said he couldn’t do it due to an issue with the junction box and it would take a week or so. Nearly 3 months later I still had no phone line despite paying the rental each month for it, and they kept trying to tell me I couldn’t cancel without paying a cancellation fee, even though they still hadn’t connected it! It took threatening to send all the correspondence (many emails!) to the ombudsman but they refunded all my money plus £125.

I was once trying to pay my water bill for about 6 months after moving house because of a computer says no situation with setting up an account at the new address (it had been marked as a business but wasn't, and they didn't provide water to commercial properties). I was constantly chasing, people rarely got back to me even though I was trying to pay them, the whole thing ended up up being quite farcical! Was very happy with the £250 I was given when I finally lost my temper and sent a letter of complaint recorded delivery (because they wouldn't let customers email them!!)

I complained to Currys earlier this year after repeated terrible failures to deliver our new washing machine (I think it took four attempts and over a fortnight in the end). They said sorry (no financial compensation though). No way we’ll be using them ever again.

I had a free meal whilst on holiday a few weeks ago, a heavy solid wood cupboard door fell and smacked me in the face and gave me a black eye which was only just healed.

Also had a couple of free meals whilst travelling because we were asked for feedback via the hotel chains app and we pointed out a couple of things that could have been better. (More parasols by the pool and having the water fountains on all day to stop the pigeons shitting in the pool)

I have disabilities and couldnt reach my meters so had to have them moved. 5 appointments for each and no meter fitter turned up. I rung up and complained and had somebody read me the "your business is impirtant to us, im so sorry, we will do better". Much to my surprise i got a cheque through the post for about £145. Then another for the same. And another, and another. All in all I got 5 cheques for the missed appintments.....they turned up for the next one!

I once found a pube on top of my asda doughnut. I tweeted a jokey complaint and they reached out to send me a gift card. They took all my details and i'm still waiting 3 years on lol

🙋🏼‍♀️

Barclays gave me £150!

I asked them to stop sending marketing letters. The letters continued so I opened a complaint, was told to wait 14 days for a response. They took over 3 months. I was given the compensation just because it was outside their promised complaint deadline. I was shocked.

I once complained to Waitrose because a chicken, bacon and mushroom ready meal, serving two, had exactly three-quarters of a small mushroom in it - they sent me a £20 voucher.

I buy several Christmas presents from Fortnum and Mason - some biscuits or jam for my aunts, and sometimes a bigger selection for people like mum or FIL. Usually it is very quick and easy, but at the moment they are having a total nightmare with their website, so five orders took us hours, over three separate sessions, and had us tearing our hair out. We emailed about the difficulties we had, and they are sending us a tin of their Christmas biscuits.

[quote thinkingoutloud4]@Obbydoo great minds think alike! We are going back tomorrow for our food shipping and have decided to use this voucher to purchase essentials for the less fortunate to donate to our various local charities ☺️ xx [/quote]
Brilliant! I am rapidly losing faith in humans as the selfishness spills over in this pandemic. It's great to hear there are some good people left in the world too. 😊

I got a 70.pound asda
Voucher for faulty tampons

My DH got a £12.50 voucher and letter from waitrose today as he returned a bag of rice that we opened and found weevils in it.

Also I hope your ankle is okay OP. Sounds like a freak occurrence

I bought a tool... it's quite a specific tool for a specific job... I wanted to start using it for a new hobby. It was just under £200.
It was so un-user friendly! I kept it for 6 months and after another fruitless afternoon trying to get on with it I sent the company a snotty email basically telling them their product was shit!
They called, offered to take it back and take the money off there next step up machine... it had been well used in the time I had it and I would have been lucky to get £50 for it second hand. Was good of them to offer I thought... I was very pleased with my upgraded machine!

I didn't complain but I took some frozen food back to tescos as there was wood mixed in with it that I almost swolled but luckily gagged when I felt the hard bits in the cooked food. I got a £15 voucher 😂

Had a strange issue with my bt box where the TV would knock off every 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Must have made over 20 phone calls and explained the issue each time. Eventually someone who knew of the issue told me it was their fault and a recently known issue affecting just some people. Lasted about 2 months and it was ridiculously annoying.
Was given the maximum compensation which was 6 months free Internet and TV. Least they could do really. What a faff!

The only “proper complaint” I ever put in was with Vodafone and they handsomely compensated me.

They royally fucked up in every possible way, but the thing is that it was all documented in my account notes so I had a slam dunk ombudsman case.

They gave me a 40% discount on iPhone 11 Pro when it was first released (apparently they never discount new iPhones??) and £200 account credit. My line tariff is very good too. Overall, I will pay significantly less than RRP for my phone so in the end it worked in my favour!

Unsure whether it was worth the 10s of hours wasted on the phone with them though 💆🏼‍♀️

Yes, when I was a student in the 90’s I had a part time job in a well known off licence chain, the manager groped my bum, my mother told me to complain so I did, I was interviewed by someone from head office, she believed me.
Around a week later I got a cheque for £800 in the post and asked not to return to work. Manager kept his job and I lost mine, I often wonder what would have happened if it had happened these days.
The most bizarre thing happened afterwards, I bumped into another woman who also worked there part time, she asked me why hadn’t he groped her, what did I have that she didn’t. I was dumbstruck.

I am well known for it in restaurants in our family.
I only complain if I have VERY good reason and I am incredibly polite and reasonable about it. I have had everything from a free drink to an entire meal. Got a very nice bottle of champers in Harvey Nichols restaurant in Leeds once for “being so understanding “. DD hates it but DH and DS think it’s great.
I actually wish it wasn’t necessary so often but if the food/service is bad then I will (politely) point it out and usually we get a freebie as a result.

I complained to tilda rice because my rice was black and smelly. They sent me a £7 voucher to buy more rice.

PG Tips sent me a box of tea in the post and a voucher for even more tea because I complained the bags in the one I had kept disintegrating in the mug.

And I had a good whinge at Rowntree because my pjck and mix only had fruit pastilles in the pack and they sent me a £5 voucher