Your best and worst customer service experiences [rant & praise]

Dues Bellator · 13-06-2008 4:04pm

AlexBM wrote: »

Wow. The immaturity of this rant speaks volumes about you. You shouldn't have mentioned nationality at all if it's apparently not an issue for you. If you would have acted 'the same bloody way' regardless of his nationality then you shouldn't have mentioned it. Simple as that. Instead of verbally attacking those that point out the xenophobic flaws in your argument.

as i said get a life, or more importantly a girlfreind. you could argue with her about the colour of the sky.i guess your one of those people who go out seeking arguments

AlexBM · 13-06-2008 4:23pm

almanu wrote: »

as i said get a life, or more importantly a girlfreind. you could argue with her about the colour of the sky.i guess your one of those people who go out seeking arguments

Good one. Because I pointed out the obvious holes in and racist tendencies of your argument, you tell me to 'get a life'. I'm not looking for arguments - I think you'll find it's you telling me to get a life and so on, whereas I'm just trying to work out the logic (or obvious lack thereof) in your rant. Furthermore, I'm a girl, and I have a boyfriend - not that that has even the slightest thing to do with any of this, nor is it any of your business...:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:...seriously, someone queried your argument, and what you meant by it, and you respond like this. How immature.

Hitchhiker's Guide to... · 13-06-2008 4:51pm

let's leave this bit of the thread for now. it's going nowhere. good / bad points made by both sides etc.

when an argument descends to "get a girlfriend" then it is going nowhere...

Dues Bellator · 13-06-2008 7:47pm

lmao

Oryx · 14-06-2008 12:44pm

mysatnav.ie are due a big heap of praise. Ordered a Garmin GPS at 4pm arrived at 9.30am next day. Plus you can phone them directly and they are knowledgeable and helpful.

Not the cheapest, but very good and I highly recommend them.

geurrp the yard · 20-06-2008 4:10am

Before i start, is it just me or is it that more and more companies adapt this customer service policy of becomming very "americanised". Everything ends with a false smile or thank you for calling such such over the phone.

The best:

Boi 365 seem to provide a good service.

The worse:

Eircom: "Broadband support " haha trained monkeys, delibratly
hung up on me.
Pc World:Can i speak to someone who speaks english!
NTL: Have they got a one person answering the phones that place.
Kfc: I could be here all day.
Halfords: Braindead muppets "i dont know how to do a refund".
Aldi:Understaffed
Oh yeah i hate the tax office aswell.

I dont know if its human nature but you tend to remember the bad customer experiences more than the good ones.

Acacia · 20-06-2008 9:19am

''Kfc: I could be here all day.''

So true. It seems to be the same in all of their restaurants. I think they charge you for packets of sauce now, and they used not too. :mad:

Rant: Pizza Hut. Went there a few days ago. It wasn't that the staff were rude exactly, just a bit all over the place. My friends' food took forever to arrive, and when it did arrive, it wasn't any great shakes. The waiter forgot my order, so that took another half-hour to arrive, though in fairness, he took it off the bill. Then I found a hair in my food, and it was a bit under-cooked.

Dessert took forever as well, and my cake was served upside-down for some reason. :pac: All in all, not the best meal ever. I don't think I'll be going back for awhile.

Praise: Shoe department in Clery's. I only went there once, but the girl who served me was very friendly and helpful. The shoes weren't that expensive also.

LoopyBum · 24-06-2008 12:07am

Good - Lidl - bought a pair of work boots there once and the size of the boot was smaller than it said on the box cuz Joe Public mixed them up while browsing... so I went back with receipt and found a nice unsmiling but helpful staff member... told her my woe and expected to have to sign bits of paper etc as to why returning blah blah blah.. but no!!! She worked her brain.. said go find the size you want and all she had to do was take back the small size and shoved the proper size in the box and handed it back to me... never even looked at the receipt... she knew well I'd bought them there... No fuss, no frills no red tape ... I like it!

Bad - Service in Eddie Rockets in Blackpool, Cork is going down hill fast... shame cuz I love their desserts!

Garth · 26-06-2008 9:49pm

Best (recently) Dominos PIzza

Had some badly cooked pizza on the weekend, which was disappointing. I took some pics (pizza was burnt on one side, not well cooked at all on other) and sent a nice email to them.

The next day I had a "random call-back" (sunday) and told the girl what had happened, and she credited us 15 euro towards our next order. Our order had been 48, but the non-pizza stuff had been perfect so that was fine.

This evening, an area manager rings me and assures me they've checked the ovens in the shop and are putting extra quality checks in place and tells me he's adding the entire price of the order as a credit on our account.

I'm chuffed!

Bring on the pizza!

Davy · 26-06-2008 10:06pm

Fair play to them

Nightwish · 30-06-2008 7:30pm

Bad - Chorus/NTL/UPC whatever they're calling themselves these days

Background

I live in rented accomodation with 3 others and the bill is in my name. We all pay into an a/c from which all bills are paid. One of my housemates had a death in her family in May, which naturally enough lead her to forget to pay her share one particular week. The direct debit for Chorus was rejected as there wasnt enough money in the account. I got a bill with a late fee, which is understandable. I paid it in full with cash that day.

I assumed the bills would still be paid from the account as I didnt hear from Chorus until last week. I received a text message telling me to contact them urgently to avoid interruption to my service. I tried to do so, but after 25 mins on hold I couldnt take it any longer.

The Response

I tried a second time to get through, and after 35 mins on hold I was put through to a customer service agent. He was a foreign bloke which should have no bearing on the matter except I could not understand a word he was saying. He kept repeating "You will get cut off on 30th June. You must pay €148". I wanted to know why but he just said "You must pay €148". I told him I couldnt understand him and he said log into My UPC, which I did but kept getting an error 404 message. He then hung up.

The following day I rang back when I calmed down, and it took 28 mins to get through to someone. Thankfully she was pretty nice and explained that once the direct debit has failed it is automatically cancelled and therefore the bills for May and June were outstanding. I wanted to know why wasnt I billed in the post with a giro with which I could pay. She didnt know and said I should have been posted a bill on the 14th of the month. I asked for the bills to be posted to my address asap, as I was still going to be cut off on 30th June. I also commented on the inappropriateness of sending text messages to customers about their accounts and told her I dont wish to be contact any further in this format.

6 days later still no bill and the threat of being cut off looming and not to mention the possibility of a bad credit rating I rang again. This time it only took 18 mins to talk to a human. Again I asked where was my bill, she looked it up and said it was still being processed! All the while they were going to cut me off from midnight tonight! I queried why was this and she didnt know. I also told her to take note of my utter dissatisfaction and I paid by credit card over the phone, without seeing a bill. I asked about July's bill and she said it will be sent out on the 14th. I wont hold my breath though.

Overall appalling customer service. I have to give them 30 days notice of my intention not to renew my contract but I have to find another broadband and cable provider

Hitchhiker's Guide to... · 30-06-2008 8:15pm

Garth wrote: »

Best (recently) Dominos PIzza

Had some badly cooked pizza on the weekend, which was disappointing. I took some pics (pizza was burnt on one side, not well cooked at all on other) and sent a nice email to them.

The next day I had a "random call-back" (sunday) and told the girl what had happened, and she credited us 15 euro towards our next order. Our order had been 48, but the non-pizza stuff had been perfect so that was fine.

This evening, an area manager rings me and assures me they've checked the ovens in the shop and are putting extra quality checks in place and tells me he's adding the entire price of the order as a credit on our account.

I'm chuffed!

Bring on the pizza!

love stories like this. it is really how all businesses should act

KBarry · 30-06-2008 8:48pm

geurrp the yard wrote: »

Oh yeah i hate the tax office aswell.

I don't like paying taxes much

but the revenue have been excellent every time I've had to deal with them. Friendly and helpful on the phone and fast replying to letters. Their website is pretty useful too. For a government department they are pretty impressive tbh.

The Black Oil · 06-07-2008 6:56pm

Super Valu in Lusk

Was in earlier and got some SV chicken fillets in a package. Price said 9.79 so went along with my other stuff and paid. A few hours later I was looking at the receipt and the chicken price said 14.69, went back to the shop to ask if something was amiss and spoke to the supervisor who apologised and refunded me.

Got 6 euro back. Always check receipts...

Mr Tim Buktoo · 07-07-2008 4:51pm

****ing eircom!! :mad:

rainbowtrout · 07-07-2008 6:45pm

ESB - when i first moved into my house I didn't receive a bill for 6 months so I rang them, they told me I/my house didn't exist. I rang them everyday for a week until I got somebody competent enough to sort it. Each call averaged 20-30 mins as I had to go through the whole rigmarole each time and I was asked really stupid questions such as:

- Are you sure you have the right address
- Are you sure the house is in your name/ do you own the house
- Does the builder still own the house
- Maybe you're not connected yet (my personal favourite)
- (most patronising) is the house in your husband's name? - I couldn't believe I was asked that one, when I said I was single I was told that 'it must be in somebody else's name'

I was assured that I couldn't possibly own my house and there was no way it could possibly be in my hame before it was eventually sorted...

Revenue: Hit and miss, some people are really helpful and some are woeful and treat you like the money is coming out of their pockets. Had to make 4 phonecalls to them about tax credits last week before i got it sorted. One of the women just didn't want to talk to me, told me I had the credits when I clearly didn't and I was looking at it online at the time. She hung up on me as did another woman.

Not as bad as last year when I phoned them for something similar and they removed most of my tax credits which meant my wages were a minus figure for 6 weeks as they were all eaten up with tax. It took them that long to acknowledge the problem and fix it. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

Eircom: my broadband stopped working for no reason 2 years ago, so I rang them (and spent forever on hold), went through all the tech support stuff on the phone and none of it worked, which I had a feeling would happen, but anyway... so 10 days of calls ensued before they said 'Actually it might be a problem with us, we've had a few calls from your area, we'll send out an engineer' To be fair he turned up that morning, looked at my computer and said 'Right I can see it's not working, I'll be back later' and never came back. That more or less went on for another 3 weeks so I cancelled with and moved to Digiweb for phone and broadband.

On a brighter note:

I've had no problems with Digiweb whatsoever. I've found their customer service efficient and everyone speaks English which is always a bonus. when I moved from Eircom they did all the donkey work, they sent me a form to sign stating I was moving to Digiweb and they did the rest.

BOI 365 are usually helpful and polite and I've never been kept waiting long.

Quinn: Friendly and efficient, never had a problem with them.

BistoKid · 07-07-2008 9:58pm

UTV internet.....customer and technical support from 9am-5.30pm Monday to Friday only. Dont they realise that the majority of their customers are using the internet weeknights and weekends?!

CantGetNoSleep · 07-07-2008 10:34pm

I second the OP's calls for Paypal and Sky

Paypal seem to give an automated response from a different operator each time, which never solved my problem

Sky disconnected me for not paying a bill with no warning, but it was their fault as they had never renewed charge with my credit card company, then wanted payment for 2 months I was disconnected before reconnection. I never went back now I get a letter in the post offering me a month free of watching some sh1t cricket match replayed about 10 times on Sky Sports if I go back.

Dodgy Box ftw

Teferi · 10-07-2008 11:15am

Was flying to Scotland recently with Ryanair. I was meant to check in online but couldn't find my passport so was using my drivers licence - walked up to check-in and provided my drivers licence as ID to the girl, she said I couldn't use it. I said I could because I was flying to the UK. She said I couldn't again.

Took out two sheets (both from an Irish Ministry site and Ryanairs site) and told her to look at what they said on their own site + ease of access aggrement. She just dismissed it and said "go to customer service". I gave her a bit of cheek - it was early in the morning and she was being a cow.

Walked over to the help desk and explained to a lad there about the situation and what the girl had said. He just goes "yeah cool, wait two seconds", prints out my tickets and hands them to me. Done all this with a smile and joking around. He didn't charge me for it either (which he should have done). Fair play to him. One of the better experiences I have had with Ryanair.

groc17 · 10-07-2008 5:17pm

I was in dunnes stores in the marshes shopping centre last week and i will not be going back. The so called checkout "manager" was so rude to one of the girls on the checkouts, I even over heard her tell another "manager" that she loves making the girls look foolish in front of the customers. I was shell shocked that she could get away with this. She looked like a right little hitler with no manners at all. I will never set foot in any dunnes stores again, not that they will miss the few euros I spend there but if anyone who saw what I did would do the same.

dudara · 10-07-2008 8:36pm

groc17 wrote: »

I was in dunnes stores in the marshes shopping centre last week and i will not be going back. The so called checkout "manager" was so rude to one of the girls on the checkouts, I even over heard her tell another "manager" that she loves making the girls look foolish in front of the customers. I was shell shocked that she could get away with this. She looked like a right little hitler with no manners at all. I will never set foot in any dunnes stores again, not that they will miss the few euros I spend there but if anyone who saw what I did would do the same.

Walking away and not spending your money will not make any difference. Make an official complaint in writing to the head manager of the store outlining what you saw. That might change something.

Wile E. Coyote · 11-07-2008 1:45pm

What a useless, hateful, shower of B******S!!! :mad:

Sorry but had to get that off my chest. Went in for a look around a couple of months ago and there was a sale on. Saw a nice dining set but wasn't really sure if we really wanted/needed it. Sales woman told us we could put a deposit on the item to hold it at that price, go home have a think about it and then give her a call if we wanted to order it. So we went home and had a think and realised that leather dining chairs in a house full of animals just wouldn't last very long so decided to ring and get the money back.

This can't be done in the shop you have to ring some faceless Customer Service rep to cancel any order. She advised that it's in they're T's & C's that they don't refund deposits you can only have an in store credit. What a crock. If we had been told this at the time then we wouldn't have paid the deposit in the first place. Plus they're T's & C's are not posted in store.

Six months later still arguing with them. Store manager can't/won't do anything. We have a poxy in-store credit that we don't want or need and they won't even let us have it in a gift voucher that we can pass on to someone who might use it.

Toto Wolfcastle · 16-07-2008 1:34pm

Ryanair were brilliant when the flights in Dublin were cancelled last week. There were announcements every few minutes offering a refund or rescheduled flight, and the online refund form was quick and easy to fill out. I got my refund today no problem. I know that I was entitled to the refund but you hear stories of airlines trying to get out of giving what's due so I thought I should point out when airlines do it right.

Glowing · 16-07-2008 2:30pm

The good: Marks & Spencers - Dundrum - This is how customer service should be!! Excellent!

The bad: Tesco

The ugly: Irish Broadband. Say no more.

Glowing · 16-07-2008 2:47pm

useful_contacts wrote: »

Oh my GOD im so sick of the place!!! Same situation with buying electronics "Go to the manufacturer" even though id have the reciept!!!

And also was in there last week looking for something that i think they were out of but the might still have some in the store room so i went to ask a salesgirl

Her response "Im sorry i dont understand"

2nd person i asked " I dont know what your saying"

3rd person i asked "I dont know much english"

At this stage we went to the service desk where once again THEY DIDNT SPEAK HARDLY ANY ENGLISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whats the point of having staff who cant help the customers cos they dont understand them!!!!!

*RANT OVER*

Haha! A few months ago, I asked a fella to tell me where the Cornflour was - he said 'what?' and I said 'Cornflour' - then he said Ahhh, and brought me over to the .... Cornflakes .... :P

mcbads08 · 18-07-2008 11:44pm

RANT RANT RANT

MBNA... calling them incompetent and rude is an understatement - the most annoyingly process driven company i've ever dealt with. Staff seem to be brainwashed by the "process" and assume customers are robot clones who are happy to go along with the process

The stupidest process ive ever heard in my life - you can't pay (ie. GIVE them money) over the phone UNLESS you are in arrears - ie. to make sure you fall into arrears if you can't get to a post office or whatever and they collect the late payment!!

The only thing more annoying is the staff who clearly do not give a damn about their customers!

Davy · 18-07-2008 11:48pm

Can use online banking to do a transfer, its also possible to use billpay.ie using a laser card or a registered bank account.

Aseth · 23-07-2008 2:21pm

Raves:

Absolutely perfect customer service:
although I probably shouldn't promote this place as I'm afraid of not getting free seats but Da Vincenzo - italian restaurant on Leeson St. is divine! Not only with great food but also really friendly/polite staff and quick service.

UPS - had to change my delivery address last few times and they had no problem with that.

Permanent TSB - friendly and professional staff, everything sorted exactly as I needed.

Bravissimo - had no problems with returning my order, they exchanged it for what I needed - all correspondence done via email.

Rant
Iwantoneofthose - the worst place to do the online shopping, they couldn't find my order, didn't really bothered to, one girl managed to find it - the next couldn't for some reason. I never received a promised callback. All this just before Christmas while waiting for presents for my family. A nightmare.

timmy69 · 28-07-2008 7:17am

Worst:
Laptopsdirect.ie
directtvs.co.uk

They are the worst place to deal with, customer service is straight up rude to the point they keep bouncing you back an forth with sales. The sales people are straight up liars! and even bad mouth fellow salesmen. They even tried to get more money out of me on the phone, when I could have bought on their website for about 50 euro less. STAY AWAY FROM THEM and laptopsdirect.ie (same company).

hussey · 28-07-2008 8:17am

My sister bought a TV a few years ago from the electronics store of ESB. When delivered, it had a small crack/scratch on the top right hand side.
She rang the store and they agreed to replace.
A day later a knock on the door with a new TV, my sister asked were they going to take the old one too (as very small apartment) they said someone else would pick that up later in day as they only do deliveries.

Since they never picked it up, I then became the recipient of a new (with small scratch) tv

Your best and worst customer service experiences [rant & praise]

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