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.

Currys-crap cutomer service and delays

british gas-leaving me without gas for 4 days one xmas with two toddlers and on the phone on hold for FOUR hours

Vax-inferior products, crap customer service and rude bloke on the phone

AOL-Because THEY recorded my name wrong(by 2 letters) on their system and therefor refused to speak to me about my account because of security

N Power.

They sent a bill based on an 'actual' meter reading. No one picked up up the fact it was about 5 times higher than our usual bill. The automatically altered my direct debit to £120 a month from £30 (it was awhile ago ). when we checked the meter whoever read it must have thought of a number and multiplied by a thousand as it was nothing like the reading.

N power refused to alter the DD even though they accepted it was based on a made up meter reading as the DD was 'your responsibility, not ours'. WTF! No amount of pointing out that DD calls are set by the originator would get through to the incredibly rude woman i spoke to.

And Petplan.

They repeated sent renewal certificates through for previous owners of our property including full bank details despite me ringing them for 3 years on the trot .

I ended up cancelling my own policy with them after pointing out I wasn't prepared to use a company who would treat my bank details with such casual regard.

Good - John Lewis , First Direct
Bad - BT , Halifax ( and I worked for them )

good
amazon - always v efficient

slumber-roo - recently hired a sling from them to try out, but an error with their new website meant that it was showing in stock when it was still out on hire. they e-mailed me within a couple of hours apologising & offering a refund, i decided to wait & they've said they'll include a little freebie when they send it out (should get to me tomorrow so we'll see!)

natural baby shower - always very pleasant when i've had to ring them, & quick to rectify errors, process refunds etc. i wish i had more money to spend with them

bad
currys - ordered a washing machine & tumble dryer online & booked a 6-8pm delivery slot. they tried to deliver at 12pm when i was in the middle of doing my driving test! customer services woman told me that the delivery scheduling bit on the website wasn't working but 'it's not our problem'!!! i cancelled my order & went to john lewis instead! this happened 5 years ago but it still makes me angry thinking about it.

mothercare - the few times i've bought stuff from the local shop, they've somehow always managed to serve me without speaking to me or even making eye contact

cd wow - DP eventually got his xmas DVDs in february

next

Worst:
Lloyds bank, mu mum and my sister went in to notify them of my father's death a couple of days after he died, they asked for a death certificate 'incase they were lying' , they also told them that there would not be enough left in his account to pay for his funeral after they had reclaimed the loan he had taken out a year before, they cancelled flowers etc, after I did some internet searching it turned out that funeral costs take priority over repaying debts so they lied!

Sports direct: because they are crap, the whole shop looks like a jumble sale, staff are crap.

La Tosca: for allowing ds and I to wait for over an hour for our food because the waitress didn't put it through, no appology, there were only three tables of customers so it's not difficult to see if a table is having a long wait for food.

Good:
Ocado

halifax a crock of

On the Bad Bad Bad list...

ORANGE

and

HALIFAX

BT charged us £860 to re site two sockets

yes ...

british gas good
amazon
waitrose
ocado
John Lewis

oh, and another couple

good
smile (co-op bank) - their fraud prevention is excellent, they spotted 2 x £500 transactions at the carphone warehouse & contacted me immediately to find out whether it was me (it wasn't) - the money never left my account.

bad
halifax - they held up the purchase of my house by at least a month because they kept sending my mortgage application paperwork to a similar sounding address over the other side of the city. never mind the fact that the mortgage broker filled out the initial forms on a computer with the right address, they just arbitrarily decided that i didn't really live there {angry] when i eventually got it sorted, customer services person advised me not to make a complaint until the house purchase had gone through in case they withdrew my mortgage offer!

Yes Lakeland are great,and John Lewis.boden are fantastic at dealing with problems,best service I've had from a clothing company,also Brora,nice human people on the telephone.Hate BT with a vengeance,and loathe as I am to say it Toast have driven me round the bend.

npower for bad billing, rude staff and absolutely diabolical customer service

BT
and for the person who said earlier on in the thread that you need them for line rental - you can pay your line rental to your call supplier (some of them at least) so you don't have to have anything to do with BT.

BT - because it is just impossible to SPEAK to anyone!
It's recorded message this, press 1 for that... Drives me potty

Two left feet

Cotswold Company

Wrap - i had them deliver to my work but the parcel didn't arrive. their courier told them he had delivered it on a holiday weekend when the office was closed ( no signature, of course) . they sent another parcel but everything was too big so i returned it. they then refused to give me a refund as the items were " replacements" and i hadn't returned the paperwork from the first parcel!!!!!

Halifax - we changed DDs name and i took in her birth certificate and passport so they could change her passbook. they refused as they do not accept these documents for name changes, only deed polls or marriage certificates ( unlikely as she is 8)

interesting kristina as they changed mine with only a letter addressed to me in my new name as evidence

We have had DREADFUL issues with passport office and the children s name changes

Orange,for outstanding shittyness when I was having problems with my broadband. DH is stuck on a mobile contact with them. He pays his bill by dd on the first working day every month, as arranged. On the 5th working day they cut his phone off for non-payment.

My local Asda for being rude and stupid.

Equiniti (shares company). Over 2 years since my dad died and nearly 2 years since I got married. Still insist on sending stuff to my dad, or occasionally addressed to me in my maiden name at my dads address despite having copies of every certificate. Promised time and time again after endless phone calls that it would be sorted and it isn't. Have involved ombudsman 3 times now. Bunch of incompetent arseholes.

Halifax for hideous new overdraft charges, and for refusing to let my mum withdraw £500 from her account even though she had more than enough to cover it. And making it very difficult to close my dads accounts and transfer them to my mum.
(...and breathe)

Dell, bad. never again.

Can't believe no-one else has had a bad experience with Virgin Media! .

We've got so many friends with similar horror tales to tell ! Bring it on!

Must confess - I've been using Tesco Online for years on a weekly basis, in London and Bath, and have always found them very reliable - they have always sorted out problems and refunds without a quibble.

Ok peeps:

Amazon,
John Lewis
errm, that's it..

Lloyds TSB.

When the Financial Crisis hit in September 2008, they kept ringing and saying they wanted us to pay down our mortgage (which was well within our contracted loan-to-value limits - I think at the time it was around 60%).

They called us daily insisting we HAD to cash in our pensions or get our parents to remortgage to help us (!), until by chance I saw an article in the Sunday Times saying that somebody in the House of Commons was launching an investigation into them for threatening their customers like that. I sent them the article, told them to stop and and copied the MP. We haven't heard from them since.

Virgin media have been fine, if the darn thing breaks down it takes them a few days to send someone out, they increase the costs anually by a few pounds but other then this they have not been too bad.

I hate Lloyds TSB.
They did the dirty on one of my friends - paid someone else's mortgage (much bigger than her own) out of her account, then charged her for going overdrawn because of their mistake! Not just once, but three times. Took some sorting out, that one.

Also, when all my other savings accounts were paying reasonable interest, I suddenly realised I was getting less interest in a whole year on a couple of thousand pounds, than I was getting in 2 months on my current account with HSBC!! Bastards. Really. They have no money of mine now.