Which organisations have you decided never to use again after poor customer service?

[tortoisefairy]

Right I will start. The idea is name and shame and maybe these huge organisations will realise to stop using ridiculous automated telephone services and to stop ripping us off!!!!

Currys - very low level of customer service after our HP printer stopped working as it was 2 months past the warrantee date.
Handy that.
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

That's better, especially now when I phone to complain and tell them I've written all about it on here.

sorry just have to post, haven't seen this thread before
lloyds tsb bank - i'd been a customer of theirs for years and they let me know when i needed my graduate overdraft facility for the very first time for a house deposit for a few days
lloyds tsb car insurance - unbelievable, couldn't alter the named driver on my policy as there was a fault on my policy?! and their computer couldn't alter it!! just kept sending letters saying that what i rang them about had been dealt with when it clearly hadn't been wtf? shouldnt' be allowed to provide insurance frankly.
bit off beam but but virgin balloon rides - i have lost days of my life on the phone to them. NEVER EVER buy a voucher for them please. once they have your money they have no interest in providing you with a balloon ride at all. and if you suggest that to them they respond as if you had called them a mass murderer. eventually i did get my money back but i lost years of my life in stress i reckon.
phew that felt good to get that out. hope it comes up if you google virgin balloons.
actually following that the whole family boycotted as much of the virgin brand as we could (had to use the trains to get somewhere) - sort it out RB!
sorry i hold grudges but it took cable and wireless - not sure what they're called now - 6 months to say i could have my landline connected to my flat. the previous person hadn't paid his bill so they couldn't do anything they said. he also seemed not to have paid, water, gas, elect but they seemed to continue ok.

co-op bank are so lovely and good though.

sorry lloyds tsb let me down not let me know

Ooh, I can't resist piling in:

GOOD
Lovely Lakeland
John Lewis
M&S
Boots
Amazon
My local library

BAD
Hillarys Blinds (just thinking about it nearly busts an artery)
Lloyds TSB
Mothercare
Talktalk
Virgin Media
With knobs on: Royal Mail redirection service

Excellent
Argos- day they received a letter and report about a 2 year old washer they rang me and agreed a replacement to same value as it was unrepairable and I said it wasnt of satifactory quality.

GOOD
Lakeland
John Lewis

BAD
Tescos and HP because of a laptop dying after lss than 2 years
Lloyds TSB
Talktalk
Debenhams

Toys R Us - For DS2s 1st birthday we bought a noddy train set from Toys R Us and PILs got a noddy road set (by fluke) but from Mothercare. Both were utter shite. Flimsy, battery hungry, very dissappointing. Took the receipts back to both shops. Mothercare refunded to my card (despite being a gift) with no questions asked. Toys R Us took the whole set out and made me wait with a crying 1 yo and an impatient 3 yo while jobsworth customer service woman set the whole thing up behind the desk and then told me there wasn't a problem with it. Asked to speak to the manager who turned out to be about 12 and said the same. The thing was clearly struggling around corners and new batteries lasted 20 mins max. Will never shop there again.

Cathartic thread! I've wondered about starting a blog for people to share their 'little black books' of companies that have screwed them over.

For me : Orange, for endless going round in circles customer service, and computers that are so archaic and useless that they might as well be using valves and levers. They,d say it,s sorted, then the letter drops through the postbox, so off you go round the phone tree again, for the person to say 'that sounds straightforward, let me update the records'... And the nasty letter comes round again like clockwork.

British Gas. Because the only thing they seem to like to do is chase people for money. Any people, any money. If only their zeal extended to providing efficient customer service to, you know, the customers who actually are paying?

The person who invented telephone trees, with a special hot frying pan for the flunkey that implemented non-exhaustive lists

John Lewis are my go-to shop because they have customer friendly ethos, not just 'customer service'. Problems get sorted out above expectation, I never feel ripped off, I love their own brand kids clothes, I like that they,re a co-operative, and seem to have mature staff. They,re what m&s were to the generation above.

Mothercare
Audi

And I like my bank, hsbc.

Banked with them for twenty years, and we,re still on good terms- it,s longer than a marriage.

OK, they refused my first mortgage insinuating that I was involved in organized crime . But they did tell me face to face. And later on, they agreed to lend me more than my annual income, again with a proper chat to understand my circs.

Their phone centre works flawlessly. Tends to connect to India, to very nice and intelligent staff.

Co-op Bank - claim they are ethical but treated dh and I very badly indeed. Never sorted out any of the problems we had with them, just gave us the brush off. Couldn't be bothered at all.

Npower - high pressure doorstep sales tactics that meant I had to shelter my neighbour's teenage son who was being hassled to sign a contract. Poor lad knocked on my door and asked me to hide him! (He's a very polite lad so didn't occur to him to slam the door, and he'd just moved to the UK from Hong Kong so had no idea what he should do.)

Zenith windows and all other big double glazing companies - rip off and dodgy sales tactics.

All home improvement companies and organisations that sell chairs/beds/household products to elderly people and trick them into signing credit agreements. Think Zenith was one of them. My poor MIL has been targeted by these bastards again and again.

Good;
Apple. Dropped my phone and screen smashed. Took it into the store and they replaced the phone for free instead if charging me a fortune.

Lakeland. Had a ceramic bowl with a lid, years after purchase the lid was dropped and smashed. Contacted them to ask if a replacement could be bought. They sent a whole new set for free.

Bad;
Currys. Bought a vacuum cleaner in there and refused to give my name and address at the till (paid cash). Was told it was needed for the guarantee. Said er...no, the receipt is the guarantee isn't it? Yes but you'd better hope you don't lose that receipt then because we won't be helping you when it's broken. All this said by manager at the top of his twatty voice while customers looked on.

Oh and SimplyfuckingBe. Bought a dress, paid off the cost all except a tenner. Forgot for a couple of months, logged back in to pay it and balance was over 125 fucking pounds. Refused to do anything about it.

Oooh yes! Agree with Edam on Zenith when DS1 was 3 months old we had them round for a quote and just could not get rid. We even went to the Drs for DSs jabs and he insisted on coming back to finish his pitch afterwards. And they quoted us 3x what we ended up paying another company. How dodgy!

BT - beyond terrible, including trying to charge me for reconnection after they wrongly cut me off and left me without a line for a week.

BA - beyond awful, never answer the phone.

Sadly joined recently by Miele, who used to be fab, but now seem not to understand that having to wait 5 days for an engineer each of the 4 times in 6 weeks that their vastly expensive washing machine fails (and floods my kitchen in the process), and then being unable to fix any times that are remotely feasible if you work full time, ain't great customer service. And breathe.

Good - Staples. Always helpful, replace faulty products, no questions asked, even without paperwork, and great prices.

IKEA is a four-letter word in our house. Stems from an UTTER FIASCO a few years back involving a delivered bed, which arrived with a forklift truck hole through the headboard. So, bless em, they sent another one, charged us for the extra delivery, and refused to take the damaged one away telling me I needed to pay for it. Courier would not wait to let me check the new headboard and guess what, it arrived with one corner crushed. All warehouse damage.

Funnily enough, IKEA chose not to believe me and hinted I had damaged them to deliberately defraud me, but refused to refund my money or collect the TWO damaged items unless I paid to have them collected.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the bit that the above all took 8 fucking weeks of negotiating, missed deliveries (on their part) in between and general rudeness from their phone operators. And a lot of passing around to people who were supposed to be able to solve the problem who were in fact trained fuckwits.

I finally rang the local trading standards office for advice, rang IKEA's head office and threatened to call in the press and a small claims court if they did not refund my money immediately and collect the faulty goods they had damaged. Surprise, surprise, someone collected the next day and they sent us a gift to apologise. Oh yes, I bet you can guess just how thrilled we were to receive 20 quid in IKEA vouchers...

defraud them: they were already bloody defrauding me

oh hester, don't get me started on the royal mail redirection service.....
10 years ago that was excellent, in just a few years it turned shite.
and if they foul up, they blame other parts of the royal mail!!!!

Wetherspoons

Good:
Apple - beyond reproach, fixed computer months out of warranty to tune of many hundreds of pounds
John Lewis - lovely customer service
Morrisons (curiously) - I wrote and complained about some mouldy fruit and they sent someone to my house with a lovely basket of fresh (not mouldy) fruit

Almost:
Wickes - good at communication etc, not so good at actually delivering - left my pensioner Mum with a pallet load of tiles this morning to carry by herself to her house - they could only get to the end of the road so left them there.

Bad:
Talktalk not great
Nationwide about to be blacklisted in the B household

They're not a national company but I could marry Arrighi Bianchi, furniture company in Macclesfield. Not only do they deliver on saturdays at a time of your choosing, but they build your furniture for you AND take away the packaging.

And John Lewis.

And the lovely shop on the beach

British Gas unreliable, rude & frustrating call centres. Crappy engineers. Refuse to do business with them.

Next refused to refund damaged item because "you should have tried it on first". Reduced me to tears. Customer services worse than useless. Have never bought anything from them again even though another store refunded immediately no questions asked. Fucking bastards.

Natwest accused me of trying to commit fraud after I complained about them contacting my home and discussing my account with someone other than account holder. Rarely have I been spoken to so rudely in my life. I closed my account.

Jojo Maman Bebe overpriced items, expensive delivery. Offer codes that don't work and customer service refuse to adjust to customer favour (even though separate orders would have been cheaper for customer but more would have cost jmb more in postage). Broken items delivered by courier due to poor packing. Promised replacement and refund never materialised.

Sainsburys Online sent out of date food, several items that need to be used day of delivery or next day for full price and several missing items. Pain in the arse going through order to find most of it needs eating within 28 hrs. Not even dh and I can eat a large chicken, two packs of sausages, a lasagne, mascapone cheese, two large pots of yoghurt, a pack of English muffins and a tub of sandwich spread that quick. Even if half of the shopping came with a drizzle of fabric softner where it had been badly packed. We use Tesco now.

Abbey/Santander for the most stupid processes and the time I rang "customer services" as directed by a member of branch staff only to face a barrage of questions about how I'd got the number before being told they didn't deal with customers (ain't that the truth!) and transferring me back to the feckin' branch where I'd started! Aaaaaargh! I hate them.

Talk Talk just mind numbingly frustrating. And apparently not subject to UK consumer or contract law . Until I contacted The Guardian where my email appeared virtually verbatim in print and my TT account got a hefty credit to put me back where I should have been.

I love Waitrose they never quibble and are always polite. They refunded corked wine with no receipt. Outstanding.

First Direct poor rates, part of hsbc which us not v ethical, but they answer in 3 rings, don't expect me to remember my account number and are polite, friendly and helpful. So I love them. Worth every penny they make from my money. I'd never take rate over service for my current account.

HSBC words fail me at how fucking shit their customer service is. Went into local branch, asked to see someone today as bank charges excessive. Told no-one available.
Demanded to see someone today and miraculously someone could see me in an hour. No toilet facility for me or DS during "interview" (poor DS soiled nappy so we had to leave bank and go to another store to change him!)
They told me the only way to cut my outgoings was to cancel sky subscription. Erm if you didn't charge me £250 a month in charges I would be alright. and I would be able to afford to buy food for our family!! I fucking hate HSBC and I think they should employ staff who actually give a damn. Or maybe they should take away all their staffs wages and let THEM try to live off 6p for a fortnight.
Call centre staff so rude! They talk over you!!

John Lewis great! Bought an ex display sofa, it had been in storage a month or two, got it home and we all came out in itchy spots!! They paid for it to be professionally cleaned which was great.

I will add T-Mobile i brought a contract because i needed the Internet, my phone wouldn't work with the Internet connection switched on so the told me just to switch it off, umm i paying for this T-Mobile you effers...

British Gas i told you i had moved house, you know my old address so why did you feel the need to get me a red mark on my credit history for £0.60p i owed you??? Why did you not send me a bill, i would have paid it... twats.

Yy to Royal frickin' Mail. Just so shit it's as if they have an anti-customer service charter.

Any bus company.