to be fed up with how f-ing difficult everything is?

[GrinchyScroogus]

Maybe I'm caught in one of those phases where everything goes wrong. I feel like everything is such an f-ing hassle if you interact with any kind of shop or goods or services and I'm fed up with it.

I've had a delivery where it was just left in a puddle when it should have been put through a letter box, the box soaked through and the item was damaged - not unusuable but not as ordered. I emailed asking for a partial refund and got sent a £5 gift card. WTF. Never ordered from these people before and had no need for anything else from them. Had another go and eventually they refunded me £20 (about 50%) - so it was worth doing but just hassle. Offering a gift card for something delivered damaged is terrible customer service, so is having to force the customer to raise it again.

Another problem where had to try to get info out of a previous company about what work they'd done to give a new company. No one answering the phone on hold forever. Phoned repeatedly and wasted a lot of time and phone bill money.

Ordered something from Amazon from a 3rd party. what was delivered was not what was described at all. Actioned return but they expected me to pay postage so needed more emails to sort that out as I was not prepared to pay postage to return something that was there complete misdescription.

A (Well known for being incompetent) courier company keep delivering a neighbours parcels to us because they can't read the address apparently (not because they aren't in). Trying to contact them is near impossible.

Just one thing after another. Complaining is stressful and I hate all this but if you don't you lose a lot of money. Leaving the courier which is just a pain, the total cost of not trying to sort out all this would have been about £130 - none of this is just shopaholic shopping either, some of it was serious maintenance stuff.

It just seems that unless you stay at home and do nothing, every engagement with every shop or service causes problems AND then sorting it out is never easy.

Does anyone else have this experience or do most people just suck up the wasted money and let it go?

SO FED UP.

Totally agree. THREE visits to a well known home furnishing store to get a refund sorted. Each time, they kept refunding a bit - wth?!

Totally agree OP.
Nothing, or very very little, ever seems to go smoothly or is done competently these days.

I'm currently doing battle with my local.council over an issue. And honestly emails were a great leap forward from snail mail. Apart from one snag: nobody ever blooming well answers them.

So many ways to communicate with companies and organisations and yet communication re problems and issues has never been worse.

Yanbu - I have taken to doing business locally and face to face more now. This way if something is wrong or faulty - I can go to an actually human and say "what are YOU going to do about this?"

And don't even get me started on "Apps". I don't want to use your fucking App.

Yes, not shopping but water company wanted to up grade my meter, I booked an appointment (for this Wednesday). 6 days early a man turns up, I refuse to let him do it because hes come on the wrong day, not from the water company (says hes a contractor). So I ring water company to see if its dodgy or not, I'm passed to 3 different departments over 30 min and they say oh yes we sent him.
Explain I am disabled (of which they know) and felt very vulnerable because the man wasn't happy I said no (they say wont happen again). Then today man turns up to do my water meter. I have to go to a medical appointment so ring water company they say oh we sent him and so I allow him to do job as no access needed.
I come back from my appointment, they ring apologise for not doing job, I ask why it wasn't carried out. She says i dont know. She phones workman, then phones me back to say actually its all completed. I say have you cancelled Wednesday appointment, she asks 'do you want me to ?' 🤣

Glad its not just me. Maybe it's the communication that's the problem.If you could call someone and they would just answer the phone, everything seems to take twice as long with emails and electronic chat.

Dare I mention HMRC? I paid nearly 1500 pounds too much in PAYE tax last year, in July I rang them (on hold for 45 minutes) to confirm they had all my P60's so could they refund the overpayment. A completely disinterested call handler explained that they were waiting on one of my savings providers to report back on how much interest I had earned on one of my savings accounts. I said I had those figures on my app - I'd earned 30 quid. Sorry - they need the bank to inform them. I asked why did I have the figures months ago and not HMRC? I was told not to worry, it would be repaid by November! I have just received my repayment - 9 months after the end of the tax year. Presumably I will be going through the same painful process next year.

Like many others , I hear you op!!
The ‘ chat boxes’ they have for many places take you in circles and trying to ring anyone results in a long wait for a human and even then it’s the wrong one or you get cut off and the fancy websites rarely tell you much.

I agree. I wanted to cancel sky moovies. It took an age to get through on the phone. When i finally managed to speak to someone it was like getting blood out of a stone. They only did what i asked when i threatten to cancel my entire sky package. It really bugs me that i can upgrade my sky package online. Yet i have to waste a lot of time trying to get through on the phone if i want to downgrade my package.

My worst experience of this: I ordered a product from abroad. A few weeks later I followed up on it because it hadn't arrived. It had been sitting in Customs waiting for me to pay the charge. I hadn't been contacted about this. It was 3 days away from being returned due to the customs charge not being paid.

So I paid the charge. Turns out they'd put the wrong address on it. That's why I was never notified about the customs charge I suppose. Luckily the postman saw my name and an address in a completely different part of town and delivered it to me at my actual address.

At last I had my product, right? Not quite. They'd only delivered two thirds of it. I contacted the company and they agreed to send on the remainder of the thing I'd bought - to the right address this time! 🎉 Aaaand I had to pay another customs charge on the missing part.

@Fluffyholeysocks UGH, don't get me started on HMRC - absolute bunch of incompetent dicks. EVERY single year they screw up my husband's tax and every single year an accountant has to sort it out.

I really do think people lack good old fashioned common sense. I work in a team customer facing by phone. The sheer lack of lateral thinking and problem solving surprises me each day.

I have just had the job of trying to sort out missing deliveries and the hell of a John Lewis chatbot.

But that is a cakewalk compared to having four PCNs from a private parking company when I’ve paid the parking fees at the time. They’re trying to fine me on the basis that I hadn’t paid the fee immediately on entering the carpark - ie whilst still driving. Sadly for them they have misunderstood the petty menopausal rage and I will be taking them to court for harassment should they not back off.

Agree. Try to buy something on line and you get caught cycling through payment apps, then verification screens, then the ban denying it as it’s a new transaction, so you have to go on that to confirm it was you, than back to the website to try to pay again by which time the cache is cleared or they may have soled out.

Go to tesco/any supermarket and you HAVE to use their loyalty card in order to be given the discounts at checkout, so that’s an app/wallet swipe before you even get to the payment bit (and your bank wants you to verify that too, even though you’ve shopped there every week for years). And that doesn’t allow for the faff of placing your own bags on the shopping table, waiting until someone can be bothered to help you, and getting stalled on at least two items because the weights don’t register or you stupidly moved your shopping bag 2mm while trying to load it.

I could go on as I am also trying to buy a house - separate apps for the mortgage co, the solicitors, the EA, for the ID verification, and so on. It is never ending. I have a smartphone choc full of apps that just seem to slow the process down…

Nobody knows anything , yet if you let your parking go over by a few minutes or owe them tax or want to pay a bill , that seems to go smoothly.
Ive got to wait over a week for a refund on something that I paid for instantly. Can anyone can tell me why it takes so long for it to go through ? I know it’s ’ how it is’ but it feels as if they take us all for mugs.

@Tabitha005 @Fluffyholeysocks @Bedtimewithoutissues123 @Mooninjune

YES! Government services of any kind HMRC or local council and utility companies contribute massively to this morrass of crap.

I'm an accountant so have to deal with HMRC numpties on a daily basis. Just when you think they can't get any worse, they do! It's been the same for 20 years ever since Brown "merged" the different tax departments and imposed managing tax credit claims on them. They're not only impossible to speak to, when you do get to talk to someone, they invariable don't do what they agreed to do, so after waiting a few weeks/months with no action, you have to go through it all again. No wonder they're "busy" with phone calls - if they actually did what the taxpayer/agent asks them to do, there'd be no need to keep phoning them weeks/months later for the same problem.

They make it so difficult to contact them too - I have the app, but couldn't apply for a refund through the app. The app told me I had overpaid tax. I ring them, the recorded message basically tells you to go to the app/website as most queries can be answered there - no they can't. The whole tortuous process is designed for you to abandon your query. We don't have local tax offices with people manning the desk anymore, we just have completely disinterested call handlers who don't seem to be able to sort any queries. So every couple of months when I'm feeling brave I ring them again to stay on hold for another 45 minutes, listening to the same recorded message only to speak to yet another disinterested call handler who can't help me.

It is companies and organisations taking YOUR time and turning it into THEIR money. They have put a system in place that costs them less than the previous system where a person picked up a phone to help you.

The cost is transferred to your time trying to navigate it. Fair enough if it’s a product or service you can choose not to use, but when it’s essential things like tax or school admin or medical appointments it’s just wrong.

Give your business to places that do things properly, where you can, and give feedback to that effect.

I completely agree. Since the pandemic, it feels like genuine customer service has almost disappeared. Recently, I placed two orders with different companies, and neither went smoothly. It was impossible to get in touch with anyone, I had to go through WhatsApp and deal with a bot, and my messages were simply ignored. In the end, I had to contact my bank to arrange a chargeback. Now, before ordering online, I always check how a company can be contacted. If there isn’t a straightforward way, I either avoid them or use PayPal to pay asI’ve found it much easier to get a refund through PayPal than by trying to reach the company directly.

@Fluffyholeysocks Yep - this is why I don't even bother trying to sort husband's tax affairs myself now and just hand everything over to an accountant. Life is TOO damn short to deal with HMRC.

@Badbadbunny you have my sympathies having to deal with HMRC. They really are appalling.

YANBU. Shopping is needlessly complicated these days. And customer service is very hard to come by. Trying to find a phone number for a large retailer where you can actually talk to a person who can give information is almost impossible. It’s all ‘Live Chat’ and going round in circles on phone lines. I hate it. Modern life is rubbish.

I detest the endless follow-up emails and messages seeking feedback on the service you've received - it clearly doesn't make a shit of difference to the service offered!

I pooped into m and s foodhall last week. To fill in the customer survey took me longer than I spent in tne store. If you mention you’d rather have staff on tills than self service is ignored anyway. It’s just a waste of time and seems to be for every visit !

HMRC are terrible.
If you can get through that is