To ask worst customer service experience

[wotwududo]

What's your worst customer service experience. Mine was with a chain car sales company. Booked to view a newish car. Got a call in the morning asking for my tea/coffee order. When I arrived, test drove the car I wasn't sure so said I'd think about it. The salesman talked me into going through the numbers. Sat down the price had gone up 2k!! I said I wouldn't need any extras. He was so condescending and rude, basically said if i didn't pay the extras they wouldn't tax the car or do any warranty. (The ad said a year free warranty) so to get the car at the advertised price I would have had to have driven it off court with no tax and no warranty. I walked we out? Anyone else?

God that’s awful..what a bitch! I feel angry on your behalf…so sorry this left you upset.
🌻🍷

I wouldn't have bought anything from them. Outrageous.

Don't let any retailer tell you that you have to contact the manufacturer. That is bulls crap. When you buy an item you are entering a contract with the retailer and if the item is faulty they must give you a refund.

how awful

I'm still traumatised from my dealings with Virgin from 15 years ago, after a very long and very dull to do about trying and failing to get cable installed, the communication was non existent they never returned calls (the many many calls they promised to return to deal with the many many issues we had) this was because they were calling me on the number they generated yet failed to install!

Barclaycard who were totally useless when I rang to cancel dad's card after his death.

Nat West who mistakenly removed me as a signatory from a charity account.

And my mother's GP surgery who, despite having authority to ring me insist on ringing her. That's fine if she's having a good day but she's 92 and her short term memory is not good (being polite) so good days are getting fewer and further between

B &Q
Recently bought all new wall sockets and plugs for home spent over £100
1 was wrong type so took it back to exchange, and was told by a young lad that the 2 tiny screws were missing from the box so can't exchange it. I said if they are not there they never were as we had not used it.
Nope definatly wouldnt budge .
I just could be arsed to speak to a manager at the time but I'm still annoyed with the Jobs worth !

First Utility
Moved house, first utility was the provider. Found a better price so switched. Got a bill for £700 for 3 weeks gas/electric (this was about 10 years ago) rang to say it was wrong. A lot of back and forth with rude unhelpful staff. Got sent a bailiffs letter. At that point got the ombudsman involved who first utility told them it was an estimate so they dropped the case. Bailiff threats for an estimate!!! My dh worked out how much we owed them, emailed the total over to them and then rang and spoke to someone with half a brain who closed the account for us. Took about 6 month to solve.

Tesco car insurance. After I had an accident not my fault it took me weeks and weeks of ringing them trying to get answers. They picked the car up eventually and decided it was a write off and crushed it without telling me. I was furious as I still had things in the car.
More weeks of ringing. Got so pissed off I wrote to head office, two days later the call centre phoned to say they'd would be paying me money and I got a very nice letter from head office.
So it did get sorted but took over 5 months. I've never used them for insurance since.

I remember a couple...

A folding shower screen, we ordered online but I can't remember the company name. Weighed a ton. Put it up with much huffing and puffing from me and DH, to discover... it leaked at a couple of the folds. Several emails backwards and forwards to the company, along with video clips, then they offered me... wait for it... 10% off. What use is that? They said that was all the manufacturer could offer. I then quoted the Sale of Goods Act at them, under which the retailer is liable to refund for faulty goods, not the manufacturer, and hey presto instant refund.

Gas fire (online again), discussed the spec and suitability at great length over the phone. When the fitter arrived, he said it was the wrong kind and he couldn't fit it in our chimney. I tried to phone the company, who had gone from answering the phone every time to never picking up. No postal address on the website or the packaging. I contacted both my credit card company and Trading Standards, who both said yes they could help, then no they couldn't do anything as they couldn't get hold of the company either! I ended up having to bin it, what a waste.

Oh, and my bank, years ago, put a block on my account for no reason. I discovered this on a night out when I was unable to get money from the cashpoint to pay for a taxi home. Luckily I had a DH at home who could pay the taxi fare. I phoned the bank the next day and the call centre couldn't access my account either due to the block! Took a while to sort out...

I was too lazy to change banks, and they did redeem themselves a few years later when, long story short, someone cashed a cheque I had written but with the details altered. The police prosecuted and set up a repayment plan for the money. Some months later, after several phone calls and visits to my branch, the bank finally admitted they had dealt with it abysmally and should never have paid the cheque in the first place; I said it was OK as I'd now got the money back via the police, and they said they'd pay me back anyway, so I got repaid twice.

Our first is Scottish Power - kept sending us red bills for a previous tenant - we sent back numerous rent agreements to say we weren't responsible. Anyway red reminder number 6 - eventually we discovered that they couldn't actually open the PDF file being sent - why no-one told us. The poor guy that was sitting there whilst I was asking him what was on the third line must have been shitting himself as we found out from the ombudsman that they kept asking people to keep going with the "send the documents by email"
We eventually just faxed them and it was fine. But they gave us a decent amount to go away.

I'm an Optometrist and I ran a large practice in central London for many years. I always taught the staff that if you're not sure of something - DO NOT GUESS. Ask a senior clinician/manager and they'll help. We then were taken over by another awful company, who seemed to do everything they couple to fob people off. (Optical Express)

Another Sainsburys one.

My local branch seems reluctant to put staff on tolls for some reason. I was walking towards the tills behind a lady with a full trolley who clearly needed a conveyer belt type till.
None were open. The lady turned to me saying something along the lines of "it's always like this..." I suddenly spotted three assistants chatting at the self scanners.
I pointed them out to the lady and she politely asked if any of the normal tills would be opening.

One of the assistants replied , in a condescending tone,

" if you need a till then you need to ask !"

The Crown hotel in blandford forum Dorset. The cleaners had turned the mattress upside down so the pillow top was underneath and we slept on the springs the first night. I complained and they said it was impossible to turn the mattresses alone so I must be lying..

I flipped the mattress alone and asked for the bed to be remade and the first thing the housekeeper said when she arrived was 'oh were they not meant to be flipped over'

Finally got a refund it took a ridiculous amount of time to get that though. Don't stay there

Not really customer service but the house we bought 3 years ago.. I was looking at Rightmove info when I was bored at work just before exchange and noticed 3 files in the epc bit.

I scrolled along and saw the estate agent had accidentally added her boarding pass from a holiday to Tenerife the year before 😂😂

I rang the estate agents and was like 'this is really weird but please can you bring up the right move info and have a look because there is identifying info for one of your agents and he said 'absolutely not this is ridiculous, why would she have done that' blah blah blah.

Eventually he agreed to have a look and spluttered 'oh my god' and put the phone down😂😂

GHD. Bought some straighteners which were supposed to come with free brush. Said brush never arrived. Complained online- heard nothing. Rang customer services...number was chargeable though I didn't realise added £45 to my phone bill after holding for 70 mins.
5 letters over last 3 months to different GHD addresses- not a single acknowledgement. Rude, useless & will meter purchase GHD ever again. Absolutely appalling customer service. If my tenacity to get a response failed what chance does anyone have?

Weird one, few years ago...

It was coming up to the end of my internet contract with BT, and I had been hearing about being quite firm and calling them to renegotiate a decent price to stay with them, lots of friends had done similar and got a better price than just continuing the contract. So I phoned up and was put through to a call centre in India, very pleasant chap at first, took all my details and then asked how he could help. When I explained he said... "are you struggling for money? If you are too poor, you could consider bankruptcy"

Oh...ok...

I agree they were absolutely unbelievably awful. They’re actually very good now because the main providers are all rated against each other and they’ve had no choice but to improve. I wouldn’t recommend them though because they’re almost double the price of Sky.

NEVER not meter

Rang customer services...number was chargeable though I didn't realise added £45 to my phone bill after holding for 70 mins.

Ooh, that reminds me - Damart. My elderly mother orders lots of stuff from them over the phone. A couple of years ago I set up a phone contract for her as she could no longer use a landline and her PAYG wasn't up to the job, and I put a montthly £5 cap on extras. She tried to place a Damart order at some point and ran out of money without managing to make a purchase. Turns out that the order line is premium rate, and they keep you talking as long as possible to bump up the charges. She'd been paying this for years without realising!

Wren Kitchens. Absolutely awful. I will now go out of my way to advise people not to get a kitchen from them.

Had I read the reviews before, which I usually do when paying thousands for something, I would not have gone with them.

Estate agent. I had recently moved to the area and had been temporarily renting after my ex bought me out of our former house.. Saw a house within my budget and went into the office to ask about it (long before Rightmove). I don't drive and wanted to know whether the house in 'AnyArea' was on a bus route into the town centre where I worked. I mentioned the house to the woman behind the counter and started my question:.

'Is 'AnyArea ' ...'
'We can't comment on areas,' she cut me off at once, smugly.

I left and they lost a cash buyer.

Mine was a local company supplying a stove . I'd had an independent fitter to assess the gap and he'd told me I could have it as wide as i liked as it was solid brick and he could put a lintel in.

The man at the fireplace shop really really didn't want to sell me the stove I wanted. I wanted the visually bigger one. He only had the display and one last one in the warehouse. He had 17 of the smaller ones. Both the same spec for output but one flatter and taller with a bigger door. The other was deeper and smaller door.

I discussed it politely without backing down, for about half a hour. I know my wood burners.

He said that the fire would be too big for the gap.

I measured it and showed him his display fireplace was exactly the same dimensions for fire and surround I had proposed, and his display looked exactly as I wanted it.

He then said I couldn't have it because the display was an electric fire and I was wanting a wood burner.

I pointed out that I was using the display to demonstrate to him the sizes and that the bigger burner would fit in the gap.

He still insisted the smaller one was better and would fit in the space just fine.

I again pointed out the space hadn't been created yet and it could be any size I wanted. I wanted the bigger wood burner so I didn't have to worry about getting smaller logs.

I was getting quite exasperated at this point. He couldn't come up with a single solid reason as to why the stove wasn't suitable.

He was so rude. I appreciate he didn't want to sell the last of the bigger burners, but aaaaghhhh.

I walked out and left my husband to buy it. It was about £350 less than the market price so I didn't want to walk away completely.

I wonder if there was another motive that day. It was so odd. Maybe he had his eye on that last one for himself.

The fitter was really pleased with the finish, the smaller one would have looked lost in our lounge.

British Gas. 1994, living in a tiny two bed flat with no heating.

They decided that I had to pay £165 a month direct debit when I was £2 in debit after the winter and kept on requesting it from my bank account, which wiped me out for about six weeks. They then said they'd change it back to the previously adequate £20 a month on the 29th.

And took £55 instead two days later.

£165 a month. In the 90s. When my entire winter bill had been £62.

the shop that couldn't deliver my goods on the originally agreed delivery day not my issue it was yesterday and the van was involved in a serious accident REVERSE

In Poundland a few years ago, just before Christmas, I had my purse stolen from my bag whilst in the shop. When I informed the manager he literally told me it was my own fault.