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.

I was told that ringing is a waste of time as the call handlers don't have access to your account so can't actually look at anything specific and can only give generic information, better to contact them through your online account if you have a query related to your specific account. If you have one of course.

One use I've found for AI, it's very good at finding telephone numbers that companies don't seem to want you to find.

2 full hours on the phone to HMRC today. And still the problem isn’t resolved 😡.

On the flip side - I ordered some wrapping paper from the Barnardos website last week, and I didn’t get a confirmation email straight away. Being impatient, busy, and eager to get it sorted, I rang the number on the website. A woman answered immediately, asked my name, checked their system, and confirmed my order had gone through. The email came soon after. But speaking to someone was like a breath of fresh air. It really was.

Yanbu.

I don't think anyone reads anything or sense checks stuff anymore. I've had colleagues who just reply to the top question in am external email thread and miss all the other relevant info further down. Why can't people be a bit more nosy?

@VielleTruite this is exactly the sort of thing I mean. If you paid with a credit card, you could raise a dispute with the card company but for £1 or £2, many people just won't bother - so in fact the retailer is committing fraud.

10 years ago, you'd take your pint glass back and they would give you the quid in cash right there and then.

This has also reminded me of another stupid thing I had with amazon with a third party seller (another note to self as well as stop online shopping and go to actual shops, stop buying from sellers other than Amazon).

I accessed the online customer service thing through the 'problem with order ' button. After going through a series of drop down menu what is your problem, ultimately it sent me (Via a click on link) to the retailers own website with a form to fill in about the problem. I filled it all in with all the details including the amazon order number

Next thing I know days later, I get an email saying 'Please contact us through the platform you bought from as we can access your order number"!!!!

So another round of emails explaining that is exactly what I had done, it had sent me to their own website and they had all the info anyway.

I agree that's its a war of attrition desigined to make everyone give up. Parking charges are all about this especially council traffic warden ones.

I am very sad and want to move back in time. Maybe I need to move to a sleepy back water in America or Africa where there are real shops with real people

I believe it's called "enshittification"

Me too.

I'm dealing with a clothes shop and a famously bad delivery company at the moment.

Item didn't arrive on Thursday when they said it would. Apparently a hoodie is too large so needs a specialist courier. It still hasn't arrived.

I asked for a refund. Clothing company can't find my account.

I don't believe either of them.

I've done a chargeback through my bank.

And I still need to buy my neice a Christmas present!

Yep, Royal Mail delivered my parcel to the wrong address.

Put in a claim. Told I would receive a response in 30 days. Two months later, they email to say I will get a cheque in the post. A few days later I receive eight first class stamps. I don’t use First Class stamps because it is so fecking expensive. Just about to email them again…

Oh so many but like other pp's I hink life is short and is it worth the aggro.

I do pick a few fights though British Gas being one of them.
They just would not have it that I had paid off the rest of the bill months ago and wanted me to send a spreadsheet containing the payment details of when it was paid etc.

I finally cracked and said the bill is paid on so and so date. If you wan't me to do your admin for you the cost will be £50 per hour. I will also be reporting to the GDPR council and the police for continued harassment. With this and their vile money grabbing behaviour during the energy situation i.e. taking large sums of money out of my account without permission, I would never ever use them again.

Edit to say they never contacted me again.

The revolution should be the small person claiming back money such massive time wasting from all these bell end companies.

HMRC has been paid (by a disabled relative who has worked all his life) in instalments for the last 40 or so years. In the last few years they've had a problem with this and continually hound him for money with debt collectors etc. It's fucking ridiculous.

😂

My pet hate is companies that only have a "contact us" form and not email or phone. You fill it in, and some of them don't even let you know whether or not it's been received.

And second to that is companies that have a phone line, but when you ring it, they give you five minutes of "have you checked this that and the other, don't call for XYZ, etc etc" before you even get to the menu. Gaaaarghh!

I think in general companies do not hire enough staff these days. There’s not enough people to answer the phones etc.

I agree the chasing up for mistakes is an extra pita but thankful doing it online is much quicker.

These companies don’t really want customers after they have sold you X y or z for whatever.
As far as they are concerned it’s job done , now get on with it and don’t bother us if it goes wrong.

Insurance companies have laughed at us all for years.
Mostly it’s win win for them or try and get out of paying out. Excess is a bug bear of mine ( although I can see why they do this ) and the money they must make is a scandal. We all just have to suck it up because not having it is a big gamble and car insurance is mandatory ( of course)
The money we have paid out over the years for insurances and it goes up every year even if you don’t claim anything

Isnt it just part n parcel of consumerism? (Scuse pun)

Agree. I hate insurance companies with a passion. I dread September as that’s when I have to go through the pain of renewing house insurance. The price will inevitably have been jacked up 50% even with no claims

I used to do a lot of online shopping but I honestly can't be arsed with the 10 e-mails that come through notifying me of every single step (plus returns are a complete faff).

Thanks for ordering.
The order is being processed.
The order is leaving the depot.
The order is on it's way.
The order is round the corner.
It is being delivered.
It has been delivered.
How was the delivery?
Rate the company out of 10.

I am lucky I live near a retail park so I now go there as much as I can. Pick up item, take to till, pay, get receipt, go home and be left alone!

Some things are unavoidable and still have to be done online though.
Apps/chatbots/filling in forms. Argh!

Completely agree OP, there is a crisis of customer service in this country. It’s impossible to speak to a human and resolve issues and no accountability on the part of companies.

This is the issue with using big companies.

This year I've barely had anything that hasn't gone wrong. I've had:

• One toy delivered broken
• One parcel go AWOL and they didn't even tell me, just eventually processed a refund
• One order of three identical items be split into two parcels for click and collect - but they didn't tell me when I picked up or on my order email? So I had to go to the shop twice
• One click and collect order that was wrong item but I didn't realise until I got home, 40 minutes drive away
• One clothing item that had a mark on but they can't exchange, only return
• One item turn up without any packaging or instructions and can't work out how to turn it on!
• Oh and disgusting bruised and mouldy apples from supermarket online shop. Honestly looked like they'd been repeatedly drop kicked.

From next year I'm buying from small local companies where I can buy from and talk to actual people.

I despise chat bots and this AI generated shit that so many companies have now, it’s so bloody frustrating when you can’t seem to speak to a human.

We’ve waited in all afternoon for Open Reach to install fibre broadband, they need to dig a trench through our front garden to lay the cables to the house. No sign of them and no text or call to say they aren’t coming, they literally have 6 minutes left of the appointment time. As it’s now pitch black out, we’ve assumed they aren’t coming today. So if we want our fibre installed, that’ll be another half day we’ll need to be home for.

The currently well known delivery company whose delivery driver can take the time to take a photo of my package that he’s thrown on my doorstep and send it to me, but hasn’t got the time to ring my doorbell to hand it to me. Then you get the email asking how your delivery was.

EDF, making it so, so difficult to get something particular done with our solar panels. We’ve had to have the solar battery company back out, we’ve had to contact the solicitor we used when we bought the house, for which I’m expecting to be charged and a couple of other things and we’re still not there yet. They really don’t want us to be getting cheaper electricity.

I have received some money from both my bank (3 x £25 payments) and British Gas (£50) as an apology when I’ve complained about the awful customer service that I’ve received from talking to their agents either on online chat or on the phone. It didn’t make me rich but it was more than enough for me to order a coffee and cake with it as my compensation for wasted hours/unnecessary stress 😆

Maybe if more people kick up a fuss and make them pay - literally - they’d have more incentive to change.

It service related but fed up of other stuff going wrong - several things have broke in the house recently - all sorted but chuffing hell we’ve had enough

Yup I agree I had to drive 45 mins to the bank! As the online chat was useless and I couldn’t get through on the phone Passed around and around even when I went into the bank they had no idea. Took ages to sort as everyone said not my fault got late charges ect everything is a lot of hassle these days!

In my experience if a business or the council thinks you owe them money they are remarkably contactable. In the sense that they ring, text, message. If they owe you money they are mysteriously uncontactable. BT, I see you.